Now you see it, now you don’t - Cognitive skills and their contributions to mathematics across early development

A broad variety of domain-specific (e.g., non-symbolic magnitude comparison and arithmetic) domain-general spatial skills inhibition) have been identified as precursors to mathematics achievement. However, due the increasing complexity education with age associated increase in cognitive demands, it can be assumed that a divergent set is predictive achievement at different ages. This cross-sectional study children aged 3, 5, 7 years aims identifying differential contribution contributors delineating their developmental dynamics. Our results reveal consistent role for across all groups, arithmetic starting from 5 visuospatial memory only 5-year-olds. These findings support notion cannot conceived unitary skill provide fine-grained analysis requirements mathematical On more general note, they are line idea ANS provides critical scaffold development but challenge view measures tap into same underlying process.