Individual differences in cognitive resources and elementary school mathematics achievement: Examining the roles of storage and attention

Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal study of 1,364 children, the present research investigated early cognitive correlates of children's mathematics achievement. Individual differences in mathematics performance prior to kindergarten and growth in achievement across elementary school were modeled as a function of two measures of attention-performance-based and informant-reported-and a measure of short-term memory. At the age of 54 months, children with poor capacities for attention and short-term memory storage had lower mathematics achievement than their peers with larger capacities. These early differences persisted through the fifth grade. Interestingly, the informant-based measure of attention did not predict mathematics achievement or its growth across time. The findings implicate the utility of early performance-based assessments of cognitive resources - storage and attention - in identifying students potentially at-risk for poor mathematical outcomes.