A Study On The Relationship Between Executive Function And Number Conceptual Learning In Preschool Children

Executive function as a kind of advanced cognitive ability, is to supervise and control the consciousness and behavior of the individual’s various operating process, there is a close relationship with mathematics cognitive ability. This study aims to examine the development characteristic of 4-6 years old children’s executive function, the relation of between executive function and the number concept of children as well as the executive function embodies in kindergarten mathematics teaching activities, in hope of finding to affect children’s cognitive factors of number concept learning and explore how to improve the level of children’s number concept from the perspective of executive function. The first study and the second study are experimental method to test 92 children aged 4-6. The first study tested inhibition function, switching function, updating function, dual-task coordination function to explore the development characteristic of each component of executive function; the second study was to test the number concept ability of children and to explore the relationship between executive function and number concepts cognitive ability about 4-6 years old children. The third study used to text analysis, kindergarten mathematics activity lesson plans analyzed, to investigate if executive function are focused on in mathematics (mainly number concepts teaching activities) and preschool teachers realize the relations between executive function and mathematical cognitive ability are valued as an important design into in the process of teaching activities.Results showed that:(1) every component of the executive function showed significant age difference, the development stages of executive function. Children’s different components of executive function present different levels in different age stages. (2) the four components of executive function for 4-6 years old children were no significant gender differences, the relevance of gender and each component scores of executive function is weaker. (3) based on 4-6 years old children’s executive function and number concepts related analysis found that:the three components of executive function——inhibition, switching and updating ability were significantly correlated with children’s number concept performance. The correlation analysis of every aspect of executive function and number concepts found that:inhibition, switching, and updating ability and six aspects performance of the number concept were significantly correlated;Except the comparing task performance, other components performance of number concept and dual-task coordination performance was no significant correlation. (4) in the case of no account of age, to perform the four components of executive function as independent variables, the total performance of number concept and its items performance as dependent variable to regression analysis found that the biggest contribution rate is switching ability, the second is updating and inhibition ability for the total performance of number concept; The regression analysis of the items performance of number concept found that the four components of executive function were different performance on the items score of number concept. (5) under the condition of considering age, the influencing factors of executive function for 4 year olds children are mainly inhibition and switching ability; the influencing factors of executive function for 5 year olds children are mainly switching and updating ability; the influencing factors of executive function for 6 year olds children are mainly switching, dual-task coordination and inhibition ability.(6) text analysis on kindergarten mathematics activity teaching plans found that almost all teachers focus on the development of children’s mathematical ability and ignored the development of executive function in mathematics teaching activities, and don’t realize the close relationship between the executive function and mathematical ability.According to the results of this study, the author put forward the following proposals for education:(1) to seize the important period of the development of executive function, and to promote the development of children’s executive function. (2) focus on the individual differences of the development of executive function, and pay attention to early education of children who are lack of executive function. (3) to promote the development of children’s executive function in the form of game training. (4) preschool teachers should constantly strengthen their professional knowledge learning to clear the close relationship between executive function and the early mathematical cognitive ability, know that executive functions is an important cognitive factors affecting mathematical ability. (5) preschool teachers can design courses which are related to executive function in mathematics teaching activities and develop these abilities (mathematics cognitive and executive function).