Relations Among Phonological Processing Skills and Mathematics in Children: A Meta-Analysis

The present study presents a meta-analysis of the relations between phonological processing abilities and different mathematics subskills. Using a random-effects model with 94 studies (135 unique samples, 826 effect sizes), the present meta-analysis revealed a significant general association between phonological processing and mathematics (average r = .33, p < .001, 95% CI [.30, .36]). Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) showed stronger correlations with mathematics than phonological memory (PM) did. The correlations among phonological processing abilities and mathematics skills were generally stronger among younger children than among older children. PA and PM manifested larger effect sizes when correlated with mathematics accuracy than with mathematics fluency, whereas RAN yielded larger effect sizes when associated with mathematics fluency than with mathematics accuracy. Metastructural equation modeling results revealed that, after statistically controlling for domain-general abilities (i.e., vocabulary knowledge, executive functioning, and nonverbal intelligence), phonological processing still made a unique contribution to different mathematics subskills (beta(s) = .20 similar to .54). These results suggest that children may use phonological processing abilities as one mechanism through which to represent, manipulate, and retrieve mathematics knowledge. Educational Impact and Implications Statement Results of this meta-analysis revealed that the strengths of the relations of phonological processing skills to mathematics abilities were influenced by the nature of the phonological processing components, the types of mathematics skills, and children's own characteristics. With general vocabulary knowledge, nonverbal IQ, and executive functioning statistically controlled, phonological processing skills indexed with phonological awareness (PA), Rapid automatized naming (RAN), and phonological memory (PM) were uniquely associated with mathematics subskills. Findings suggest that early PA and RAN abilities in particular may be good early indicators of mathematics performance. In order for children to learn to recognize numerical information, count, and reason about mathematical associations, phonological processing is necessary. One possible implication of these results is that early training in recognition and manipulation of speech sounds (PA), as well as RAN, representing fluent phonological access to symbols, may facilitate early mathematics learning. Overall, findings highlight the importance of phonological processing in the development of mathematics in young children.