The Extent to Which Different Executive Function Skills Mediate the Spatial-Math Link

Understanding factors related to early math development is critically important because early math skills predict a number of academic outcomes, such as later math, reading, and school success. Links between spatial and math skills and between executive function and math skills have been established consistently throughout extant research across a variety of ages and skill types. However, little work has examined how these three skillsets are connected; specifically, whether executive function mediates the spatial-math relation. Although past research has found no mediation, this research only included three measures of executive function skills and treated executive function as a single construct, rather than examining the potentially different roles of various executive function skills in the relationship between spatial and math skills. The present study addressed this gap by examining whether five executive function skills (i.e., working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, behavioral self-regulation, planning) mediate the relationship between spatial and math skills in preschoolers. Results showed that cognitive flexibility and behavioral self-regulation uniquely mediated this relation, providing preliminary evidence that three specific executive functions (cognitive flexibility, behavioral self-regulation, and planning) mediate the relationship between spatial and math skills. Implications and future directions are discussed.