Caroline Hornung

• PhD
• Researcher at University of Luxembourg

Early number competence, grounded in number-specific and domain-general cognitive abilities, is theorized to lay the foundation for later math achievement. Few longitudinal studies have tested a comprehensive model for early math development. Using structural equation modeling and mediation analyses, the present work examined the influence of kinde...

In the present study, we opted for a longitudinal design and examined rapid automatized naming (RAN) performance from two perspectives. In a first step, we examined the structure of RAN performance from a general cognitive perspective. We investigated whether rapid naming measures (e.g., digit RAN and color RAN) reflect a mainly domain-general fact...

Luxembourg’s student population is highly diverse in terms of language and family background and shows disparities in learning performances as early as first grade (Cycle 2.1). Achievement gaps might be increased by the high language demands in the traditional Luxembourgish school system. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) including for inst...

The pilot project ‘ALPHA - zesumme wuessen’ was launched in order to do better tackle the linguistic diversity of the pupil population in Luxembourg and to reduce existing educational inequalities. The pilot project offers pupils at four pilot primary schools the opportunity to learn to read and write in either French (ALPHA-French) or German (ALPH...

Literacy acquisition builds on linguistic skills (e.g. understanding of the language of instruction, phonological awareness). Given the heterogeneous student population, of which only 31.6% speak Luxembourgish at home (MENJE & SCRIPT, 2024), the assumption of a transfer from Luxembourgish to German for children with different family languages is an...

Luxembourg is a highly diverse country in terms of the linguistic, sociocultural, and socioeconomic composition of its population. This diversity is reflected in the Luxembourgish education system with an increasing share of students speaking language(s) other than Luxembourgish and/or German at home. In order to deal more adequately with the stude...

Achievement gaps between students of different family backgrounds have been found in many countries (e.g. Stanat & Christensen, 2006). They are not only based on socioeconomic status or immigration background, but also on home language: If children do not speak the language of instruction at home, they are often disadvantaged in school and perform...

For decades, researchers have been raising awareness of the issue of educational inequalities in the multilingual Luxemburgish school system. Especially children from families with a migration background or a lower socio-economic status show large deficits in their language and mathematics competences in comparison to their peers. The same applies...

The world has been in a pandemic state of emergency for almost two years, and current evidence from international studies suggests that pandemic-related school closures in 2020 had a negative impact on student achievement and that certain groups of students were more affected than others. Now the results of the Épreuves Standardisées (ÉpStan) [Stan...

Antônio est un garçon en âge scolaire vivant au Luxembourg et lequel est sur le point d’apprendre à lire et à écrire. Les parents d’Antônio sont portugais et s’expriment uniquement dans leur langue maternelle à la maison. Au Cycle 1 de l’enseignement fondamental (enseignement précoce/préscolaire), Antônio a appris à parler luxembourgeois. Ayant été...

Antônio ist ein Junge aus Luxemburg im schulpflichtigen Alter. Er wird demnächst Lesen und Schreiben lernen. Antônios Eltern sind Portugiesen, und zu Hause sprechen sie nur ihre Muttersprache. In Cycle 1 (Vorschule) hat Antônio Luxemburgisch sprechen gelernt. Seit er in der Vorschule mit der Sprache in Berührung gekommen ist, hat er sich einen groß...

The article investigates how school-aged children's competencies in mathematics, listening and reading comprehenesion develop from G1 to Grade 3 in the multilingual public school setting in Luxembourg. Furthermore the article examines the effect of grade retention on children's learning progress. The results show that grade retention has no positiv...

Les contextes socio-économique et linguistique des élèves exercent une influence prépondérante sur leur parcours scolaire. Les performances des élèves qui ne parlent ni le luxembourgeois ni l’allemand à la maison et issus de familles socialement défavorisées se dégradent dans les compétences scolaires analysées pour l’ensemble des cohortes. Il conv...

Achievement in mathematics has been shown to partially depend on verbal skills. In multilingual educational settings, varying language proficiencies might therefore contribute to differences in mathematics achievement. We explored the relationship between mathematics achievement and language competency in terms of home language and instruction lang...

Mathematics skills are the fundament of modern societies, especially those based on a knowledge-economy. The age of digitalization renders mathematics education even more crucial since it builds the starting point for all STEM-related fields. Consequently, mathematics is at the core of numerous educational Large-Scale Assessments on international (...

There is consistent evidence that symbolic abilities predict later mathematical achievement, whereas findings for non-symbolic abilities are more inconsistent. However, in previous research non-symbolic abilities were primarily considered as acuity of the approximate number system. In this study, we conceptualized symbolic and non-symbolic abilitie...

Rechenstörungen kennzeichnen sich durch sehr heterogene Störungsbilder, sowohl bezüglich der Ursachen, Symptome als auch der Intensität. Mathematische Kompetenzen sind komplexe Fähigkeiten und bauen auf spezifischen basisnumerischen, sowie auf allgemeinen kognitiven Fähigkeiten auf. Diese Komplexität kann neben schulischen Schwierigkeiten zu vielfä...

Fingers have been recurrently associated with number development and mathematical achievement. Specifically finger gnosis have been considered as a potential precursor of numerical learning. However recent findings cast doubt on the existence of a link between finger gnosis and numerical skills. In fact, finger gnosis and canonical finger represent...

School career and academic achievement are known to largely affect an individual’s path through life (e.g., Trapmann, Hell, Weigand & Schuler, 2007; Jimerson, 2001). In addition to the student’s cognitive and socio-emotional abilities and learning effort, context characteristics such as family background, student-teacher interaction, school and tea...

While numerical skills are fundamental in modern societies, some estimated 5–7% of children suffer from mathematical learning difficulties (MLD) that need to be assessed early to ensure successful remediation. Universally employable diagnostic tools are yet lacking, as current test batteries for basic mathematics assessment are based on verbal inst...

Children’s development of verbal number skills (i.e., counting abilities and knowledge of the number names) presents a milestone in mathematical development. Different factors such as visuo-spatial and verbal abilities have been discussed as contributing to the development of these foundational skills. To understand the cognitive nature of verbal n...

The present study investigated the predictive role of spatial skills for arithmetic and number line estimation in kindergarten children (N = 125). Spatial skills are known to be related to mathematical development, but due to the construct's non-unitary nature, different aspects of spatial skills need to be differentiated. In the present study, a s...

While numerical skills are fundamental in modern societies, some estimated 5-7% of children suffer from a mathematical learning disorder, called developmental dyscalculia (DD). Nevertheless, universally valid diagnostic instruments are still lacking, as all current DD test batteries are based on language instructions. Consequently, their measuremen...

The acquisition of verbal number skills, as defined by the meaningful use of number words, marks a milestone in numerical development. In the present study, we were particularly interested in the question, whether verbal number skills are primarily verbal in nature, or if they call upon visuo-spatial processes, reflecting a spatial grounding of ver...

The main purpose of this study was to examine the specific contributions of rapid automatized naming (RAN) measures with different visually presented stimuli (e.g., vowels, consonants, digits) to reading outcomes in first and second grade. Previous studies have shown that RAN is an independent and robust predictor for reading skills in children. Le...

Verbal number skills (i.e. counting and number naming) are milestones in numerical development. The aim of the present study was to clarify the role of different verbal abilities (VA) and visuo-spatial abilities (VSA) in the development of these verbal number skills in kindergarten. We recruited 152 children (mean age: 5.8 years) and administered d...

Assessing the importance of different aspects of spatial skills on preschoolers performance in arithmetic and number line estimation

Human adults' numerical representation is spatially oriented; consequently, participants are faster to respond to small/large numerals with their left/right hand, respectively, when doing a binary classification judgment on numbers, known as the SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect. Studies on the emergence and development...

Abstract Working memory (WM) has been predominantly studied in adults. The insights provided by these studies have led to the development of competing theories on the structure of WM and conflicting conclusions on how strongly WM components are related to higher order thinking skills such as fluid intelligence. However, it remains unclear whether a...

Prior research on the structure of academic self-concepts has demonstrated academic self-concepts to be domain-specific and hierarchically organized, but has largely failed to support the hypothesis that general academic self-concept is at the apex of the hierarchy. The present study investigates a new multidimensional nested-factor model of academ...