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Abstract

Spatial and numerical thinking are crucial components of early mathematics. They are closely entangled during development, but the nature of their shared processing has remained unclear due to the diverse skills that constitute each domain. This study investigated the latent structure of the spatial and numerical domains early in the developmental trajectory. 397 preschoolers aged 3-6 were tested on foundational skills from the "Getting on Track Early for School Success" assessment. They completed 11 spatial and 9 numerical tasks which corresponded with 4 major skills in each domain. 2-parameter-logistic item-response theory models estimated spatial and numerical ability scores, with verbal ability scores as covariates. A subsequent exploratory factor analysis was conducted with an oblique ‘geomin’ rotation and maximum likelihood estimation. It revealed a one-factor cross-domain solution with substantial loadings on all tasks. This demonstrated the highly overlapping nature of spatial and numerical thinking, showing that they are indistinguishable in early childhood. Results also revealed some early signs of divergence which may reflect their development into independent domains in later years. Patterning and ordinal thinking showed the strongest connections across domains, while spatial reasoning and counting were the most separated. Interventions that target both domains will be an important next step in empirically validating the factor structures found here to illustrate that training one domain can lead to improvements in the other.

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