Predictive relations between early place value understanding and multidigit calculation: approximate versus syntactic measures

Abstract The current longitudinal study measured 279 kindergartners’ (Mage =5.76 years; SD = 0.55; 135 females) place value understanding using both approximate and syntactic measures based on previous evidence that early variation in performance on approximate measures was associated with subsequent syntactic place value understanding. In the present study, we used the same dataset but traced kindergarten variation on both approximate and syntactic measures to children’s multidigit calculation skill in second grade. Path analyses indicated that latent approximate place value knowledge predicted later multidigit calculation performance but more precise understanding of counts and base-ten units did not. However, among the individual task predictors, Base-Ten Counting was the strongest predictor followed by a task asking for specific count of units (e.g. ‘Which number has [two tens]?') and reading and writing number names (Transcoding). Thus, multidigit calculation skills appear to develop from an emerging, but imprecise understanding of count + unit syntax.