AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG 60-72-MONTH-OLD CHILDREN’S ATTENTION ABILITIES AND THEIR GEOMETRY AND PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship among attention abilities, geometry, and phonological awareness skills of 60-72 months old children. The accessible population of the research in the relational scanning model consisted of 60-72 months old children attending to kindergartens and nursery classes of elementary schools in a province of Turkey in the 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study included 347 children aged 60-72 months, who were randomly selected to attend high, middle, and lower socio-economic level schools and volunteered to participate in the research. In the research, "General Information Form" to collect data about children and their parents, "Frankfurter Test Für Funjahrige Konzentration –FTF-K” (Attention Gathering Test of Five-Year-old Children) developed by Raatz and Möhling in 1971 to determine children's attention levels and adapted by Gözüm (2017), "Early Geometry Skills Test" developed by Sezer (2015) to assess children's geometry skills and "Early Literacy Skills Assessment Tool" consisting of five subtests developed by Karaman and Güngör Aytar (2016) to measure the phonological awareness skills of children were used as data collection tools. Simple Linear Regression and Pearson Correlation tests, which are parametric tests, were used to analyze the data. As a result of the findings, it was found out that the children's attention ability was high, and their geometry and phonological awareness skills were low. Children's attention ability significantly predicted their geometry and phonological awareness skills. It was concluded that there were significant relationships between gender, parental education level variables, and children's geometry skills and phonological awareness skills.

Keywords: Attention ability, geometry skill, phonological awareness skill, 60-72-month-old children, preschool education