Influences of Language and Parental Involvement on the Development of Counting Skills: Comparisons of French- and English-speaking Canadian Children

French- ( n =27) and English-speaking preschoolers ( n =38) completed four number tasks. French-speaking preschoolers performed more poorly on the rote-counting and number-recognition tasks than English-speaking preschoolers, but the groups did not differ on counting objects. Thus, French-speaking children may find it more difficult to master the number names than their English-speaking peers. Importantly, however, French-speaking parents' reported a lower frequency of teaching their children about numbers, letters, and words than English-speaking parents. Multiple regression analyses indicated that variability in counting and number recognition were predicted both by knowledge of the counting string ( i.e. , language) and by differences in parents' reports of teaching about numbers and letters ( i.e. , culture). Thus, researchers should examine potential variations in cultural factors such as parental involvement when comparing the academic skills of groups of children who ostensibly differ only in language.