PARENTS OBSERVATIONS OF KINDERGARTNERS WHO ARE ADVANCED IN MATHEMATICAL REASONING

What behaviors and abilities do young, mathematically precocious child ren display! Are parents able to recognize such precocity? Questionnai res were completed by 100 parents of kindergarten-age children whom th e parents thought to be mathematically precocious. Questions were deri ved from parents' spontaneous descriptions of the development of their children as well as behaviors consonant with items on two screening m easures: the Arithmetic subtests of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of inte lligence, Revised (WPPSI-R). The children, as a group, did well on the screening measures, achieving mean scores of 121.4 (92nd percentile) on the K-ABC and 124.9 (95th percentile) on the Wechsler subscales. Th e questionnaire asked parents 27 items about children's mathematical b ehavior and 18 items comparing the children with peers on nonmathemati cal skills. Five factors were found to characterize the parents' respo nses: (a) a general intellectual factor, (b) short- and long-term memo ry, (c) rote (rehearsed) memory, (d) spatial reasoning, and (e) specif ic relational knowledge. It was concluded that parents can indeed iden tify young children who are advanced in mathematical reasoning and can describe that mathematical behavior in coherent ways.