Preschool Children’s Narratives and Performance on the Peabody Individualized Achievement Test – Revised: Evidence of a Relation between Early Narrative and Later Mathematical Ability

Abstract

In this study, different measures derived from 41 3- to 4-year-old children’s selfgenerated picture-book narratives and their performance on a general measure of language development (TELD-2, Hresko, Reid & Hammill, 1991) were evaluated with respect to their possible predictive relation two years later with 5 areas of academic achievement (General information, Reading recognition, Reading comprehension, Math, Spelling) assessed using the Peabody Individualized Achievement Test – Revised (PIAT-R, Markwardt, 1998). Children’s TELD-2 scores were significantly predictive of their General information scores. The narrative measures of conjunction use, event content, perspective shift, and mental state reference were significantly predictive of later Math scores. Post-hocanalyses revealed that, for the same children, the observed relations with Math achievement did not arise with nonspontaneous adult-prompted narrations.