# Early Development of Children's Flexible Attention to Numerical and Spatial Magnitudes

> **NIH NIH R15** · UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON · 2020 · $438,829

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Early math skills are key to children’s long-term academic and career success, but many
children from disadvantaged backgrounds start their formal schooling lagging behind their peers
in early math skills development. Beyond family disadvantage, between 3 – 6% of the
population has a diagnosed math learning disability, which limits their ability to benefit from early
math interventions. Many unanswered questions remain around which particular skill sets are
key to target in early math interventions, including ongoing debates about the role of children’s
non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison skills as an intervention target. Researchers
have also identified a close link between children’s executive functioning skills and their early
math achievement, but most studies have failed to find an executive functioning skills
intervention that specifically transfers to children’s math achievement. This proposal will test a
novel account of children’s early math skills development, the Flexible Attention to Magnitudes
account. This account argues that one key difficulty young children have in early math activities
that is not addressed by current interventions is the ability to disentangle numerical and spatial
magnitude cues (e.g., comparing 3 large elephants to 6 small mice) and to attend flexibly to
both cues in math problem solving. This ability may explain children’s difficulties with particular
types of non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison tasks and may help preschool-aged
children develop both their executive functioning skills and their math skills. The first goal of this
project is to develop an assessment of children’s flexible attention to numerical and spatial
magnitudes. Using this assessment, the second goal is to assess the associations between
children’s performance on this assessment and their executive functioning and math skills
(including overall math achievement as well as specific early math skills such as non-symbolic
numerical magnitude processing). The third goal is to conduct a clinical trial of the malleability of
children’s flexible attention to magnitudes. The goals of this proposal are consistent with NIH’s
mission to provide fundamental knowledge about the human behavior, specifically in the area of
early math cognition. This proposal is also closely aligned with NIH’s mission to apply basic
research knowledge to enhance health and reduce disability, as the improvement of young
children’s early math skills can have lasting impacts on their later academic and career success,
leading to better health outcomes. Further, this proposal involves children from disadvantaged
backgrounds who are at-risk for math learning difficulties, and the outcomes of this project may
be used to address specific needs of children with math learning disabilities.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9878340
- **Project number:** 1R15HD100936-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Mary Catherine Wagner Fuhs
- **Activity code:** R15 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $438,829
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9878340

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9878340, Early Development of Children's Flexible Attention to Numerical and Spatial Magnitudes (1R15HD100936-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9878340. Licensed CC0.

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