The roles of executive functioning and oral language skills in young Chinese children's arithmetic competence

This study investigated the relative contributions of executive functioning (EF) and oral language skills to performance on number-fact and story problems in Chinese children. A total of 280 kindergarten children in Hong Kong participated in this study. Children were assessed on their EF, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, receptive vocabulary, performance on number-fact and story problems. Results of path analysis showed that when children's age and parental education were controlled, children's EF, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness were correlates of performance on both number-fact and story problems, whereas receptive vocabulary was not. After further controlling for performance on number-fact problems, morphological awareness was the only variable under investigation that linked to performance on story problems. These findings underscore the importance of taking the development of EF and oral language skills into consideration when guiding children's arithmetic learning. •Executive functioning (EF), phonological awareness and morphological awareness were significantly associated with number-fact and story problems in Chinese children.•Morphological awareness uniquely predicted story problems after number-fact problems were controlled for.•Receptive vocabulary, among EF and other language skills, was not correlated with both number-fact and story problems.