Emerging Understanding of Patterning in 4-Year-Olds

Young children have an impressive amount of mathematics knowledge, but past psychological research has focused primarily on their number knowledge. Preschoolers also spontaneously engage in a form of early algebraic thinking—patterning. In the current study, we assessed 4-year-old children's knowledge of repeating patterns on two occasions (N = 66). Children could duplicate and extend patterns, and some showed a deeper understanding of patterns by abstracting patterns (i.e., creating the same kind of pattern using new materials). A small proportion of the children had explicit knowledge of pattern units. Error analyses indicated that some pattern knowledge was apparent before children were successful on items. Overall, findings indicate that young children are developing an understanding of repeating patterns before school entry. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant DRL-0746565. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of NSF. A special thanks to the students and teachers at Glen Leven Presbyterian Church Dayschool, Gordon Jewish Community Center Preschool, Holly Street Daycare, and Fannie Battle Day Home for Children for participating in this research. Thanks to Heather Dunham and Katharine Miller for help in coding the data. A special thank you to Maria Blanton, Tom Carpenter, Doug Clements, Janet Eisenband-Sorkin, and Jon Star for their expert opinions on the items and construct map. Notes Note. Adapted from Clements and Sarama (Citation2009). *For example, Duplicate_AABB indicates that the child was asked to duplicate an AABB pattern. Note. Difference between tasks based on paired t-test: **p < .005. *p < .05. Note. Difference between tasks based on McNemar's test for nominal data: **p = .005, †p < .10.