Actions may speak louder than words: Comparing methods of assessing children's spontaneous focusing on number.

Young children vary widely in the extent to which they attend to numerical information in their everyday environments without explicit prompting. This tendency to spontaneously focus on numerosity has been linked to children's math skills in past work. However, various measures have been used to quantify children's spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) in previous studies, some of which rely on children's behavioral responses and others of which rely on verbal responses. Furthermore, these measures are not consistently related to one another or to children's math skills. In this study, we compared children's SFON as demonstrated through their behaviors and verbal responses during a set of imitation tasks in a sample of 107 3- and 4-year-olds. We found that children behaviorally demonstrate SFON (e.g., stamping the same number of spikes on a dinosaur as an experimenter) more frequently than they discuss number during the same tasks, but the two indices of SFON were significantly associated when accounting for variability in children's overall speech. Furthermore, we found that children's SFON through their actions was significantly predicted by prior math skills, whereas SFON through speech was not. These findings indicate that SFON may be a multifaceted construct, although more work is needed to extend these findings to other common SFON tasks.

Clusters of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Across Six Schools for Students with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

INTRODUCTION: Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are at increased risk for adverse outcomes from coronavirus disease 2019. Clusters of COVID-19 infections can be used to track SARS-CoV-2 transmission. This is particularly important in environments frequently used for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as schools. The objective of this study was to compare the number of clusters of student and staff cases identified during three distinct periods (pre-Delta, Delta, and Omicron) of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Weekly COVID-19 testing occurred from November 23, 2020 to May 27, 2022 during three phases of the COVID-19 pandemic: pre-Delta, Delta, and Omicron. Structured interviews were conducted with positive cases to determine if they contracted COVID-19 in the school environment, and interviews with school administrators responsible for contact tracing determined school-based clusters. RESULTS: 160 cases of COVID-19 were identified and 55 cluster positives were recorded during the study period. 0 (0%) cluster positives were recorded during the pre-Delta variant wave, 3 (5%) cluster positives were recorded during the Delta variant wave, and 52 (95%) cluster positives were recorded during the Omicron variant wave. Additionally, 23 (85%) of all positives during pre-Delta, 12 (50%) of all positives during Delta, 66 (61%) of all positives during Omicron, and 36 (69%) of cluster positives during Omicron did not receive CDC-recommended dosages of the COVID-19 vaccine. CONCLUSION: The Omicron variant led to an increase in cluster-based transmission, and staying up to date with vaccination guidelines was crucial in limiting transmission. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: Prior to enrollment, this study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov on September 25, 2020 (identifier NCT04565509; titled "Supporting the Health and Well-being of Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disability During COVID-19 Pandemic").

Understanding the unique contributions of home numeracy, inhibitory control, the approximate number system, and spontaneous focusing on number for children's math abilities.

Math abilities are important predictors of both children's academic achievement and their outcomes in adulthood such as full-time employment and income. Previous work indicates that parenting factors (i.e., parental education, parent math ability, frequency of math activities) relate to children's math performance. Further, research demonstrates that both domain-general (i.e., language skills, inhibitory control) and domain-specific (i.e., approximate number system acuity, tendency to spontaneously focus on number) cognitive predictors are related to math during early childhood. However, work to date has not examined all of these factors together to identify their unique contributions for young children's math abilities. Thus, in the present study we examine whether parent-level and child-level factors uniquely explain children's math abilities. To this end, 112 four-year-old children and one of their parents completed a battery of assessments and questionnaires. Results indicate that children's math performance is uniquely predicted by the frequency of home math activities reported by the parents, as well as children's own inhibitory control, approximate number system acuity, and tendency to spontaneously focus on number. These parent- and child-level factors provide independent targets for future interventions aimed at improving early math performance.