ENPAIR 2025

Mathematical and grammatical competencies are crucial key skills for children's learning processes at pre-school and primary school age. To date, however, it remains unclear how specific mathematical and grammatical skills are related from preschool to primary school age and how similar difficulties in the acquisition of mathematical and grammatical skills exist in children with diverse learning conditions. Based on a systematic review of a total of 95 studies, 67 studies on children with typical development (TD), 7 studies on children with mathematical learning difficulties (MD), and 21 studies on children with developmental language disorders (DLD) were identified and included in an on-going meta-analysis with a total of about 1,318 individual effect sizes (TD: 1,003; MD: 26; DLD: 289). The estimated effects are analyzed using multilevel random-effects models. The effect sizes (and variances) will be further investigated regarding the influence of potential moderators from sample-specific variables (e.g., IQ, working memory skills, target language, socioeconomic status) as well as task-specific variables (e.g., study design, type/specificity of grammatical or mathematical skill). The findings of the meta-analysis promise a detailed clarification of the relationship between grammatical and mathematical abilities of children with different learning conditions on a valid statistical basis and enable subsequent evidence-based research and implications to foster children’s mathematical learning.