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Parents are considered a major resource in children's numeracy development. The relative role of cognitive and motivational parenting practices, however, is unclear given that the two types of practices have largely been studied in isolation. The current study simultaneously estimated the contributions of several cognitive and motivational parenting practices hypothesized to be important, but which may have overlapping effects. To capture parents' cognitive practices, the level and structure (i.e., prompts vs. statements) of 529 American parents' (80% mothers; 65% White, 20% Black; 33% less than a bachelor's degree) numeracy talk was coded during a challenging numeracy activity. Parents' motivational practices were assessed by coding their autonomy support and control in the activity. Children's (Mage = 7.5 years; 49% girls) engagement of numeracy strategies was also coded. Multilevel minute-to-minute modeling predicting children's engagement from both cognitive and motivational parenting practices indicated that parents' cognitive practices, particularly advanced prompts, predicted children's subsequent engagement of numeracy strategies, which were often advanced. Parents' motivational practices, as reflected in their autonomy support (vs. control), also foreshadowed children's engagement. These effects of the two types of practices were independent of one another. Taken together, the findings are consistent with the idea that cognitive and motivational parenting practices provide distinct resources that can benefit children's math learning. Public Significance Statement: This research suggests that an optimal approach for parents in supporting early elementary children's numeracy learning is to use a combination of (a) prompts that reference relatively advanced numeracy concepts and (b) autonomy-supportive (vs. controlling) parenting practices in interacting with their children in the numeracy context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing evidence suggests that success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is not only dependent upon one's actual STEM-relevant abilities but also upon one's STEM-relevant attitudes—in particular, math and spatial attitudes. Here, we examine whether simply mentioning the math or spatial relevance of a task affects children's performance and the moderating role of children's math and spatial attitudes. Further, we examine gender differences in performance given pervasive gender gaps in STEM and early-emerging gender differences in math and spatial attitudes. Participants (221 first- to fourth-grade children from the United States; 113 girls, 108 boys; 52% White, 16% Black, 14% Asian, 9% Hispanic or Latinx, 18% multiple races/ethnicities) were introduced to a novel task framed as tapping into math or spatial abilities (or no framing [control condition]). Children then completed math and spatial anxiety and self-concept measures. Results indicate that children who heard the math task framing were less accurate relative to children in the control condition, and the effect was larger for those with higher math anxiety or lower math self-concept, but it was not different for boys and girls. Children who heard the spatial task framing, however, performed comparably to children in the control condition. Though both math and spatial attitudes revealed identical patterns of gender differences (with higher anxiety and lower self-concept in girls than boys), there were no gender differences in performance. This study highlights the salient role of math attitudes early in development and provides key insights for future work aimed at increasing STEM outcomes. Public Significance Statement: Findings reveal that children perform worse on a novel task when it is described as being related to math—but not spatial—skills, and this effect is strongest for children with more negative math attitudes. Moreover, girls had more negative math and spatial attitudes than did boys, but gender differences were not observed in performance on the task. Findings provide key insights into processes implicated in science, technology, engineering, and math outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]