Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal study of 1,364 children,
the present research investigated early cognitive correlates of children's mathematics achievement. Individual
differences in mathematics performance prior to kindergarten and growth in achievement across
elementary school were modeled as a function of two measures of attention—performance-based and
informant-reported—and a measure of short-term memory. At the age of 54 months, children with poor capacities
for attention and short-term memory storage had lower mathematics achievement than their peers with
larger capacities. These early differences persisted through the fifth grade. Interestingly, the informant-based
measure of attention did not predictmathematics achievement or its growth across time. The findings implicate
the utility of early performance-based assessments of cognitive resources – storage and attention – in identifying
students potentially at-risk for poor mathematical outcomes.