Abbie Cahoon is a developmental and cognitive psychologist with a particular specialism in early mathematical development and mathematical cognition. Abbie has worked on projects which focus on global early child development in Mexico, Cuba and the UK, funded by the British Academy and the Global Challenges Research Fund. Abbie’s research focuses on investigating the impact of the home learning environment on early mathematical development through various mixed-method analyses.

Abbie has a keen interest in the longitudinal development of early mathematical skills and early childhood education. Abbie is the Chairperson and Early Career Representative of the Centre of Longitudinal Studies Ireland (CLSI) Early Career Committee and has organised and participated in online workshops with a team of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) aimed towards developing the skills and experiences for ECRs. Abbie has been involved in the setup and execution of a largescale longitudinal study called Children’s School Lives (CSL) during her Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin. CSL is a study commissioned by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). The study explores the experiences of over 4000 children in 189 Irish primary schools across Ireland from Spring 2019 to Spring 2024, providing Ireland’s first nationally representative study of primary schooling. Abbie is interested in the ways that children engage with and learn from their environments and how these interactions and learning opportunities develop across educational transitions.

Abbie completed her PhD in Developmental Psychology at Ulster University in 2019. Abbie’s doctoral thesis was titled, “Early mathematical learning: As easy as 1, 2, 3?”. Abbie’s thesis involved various skills including qualitative analysis, questionnaire development and the validation of a Pre-School Home Mathematics Questionnaire (PHMQ) and the execution of a longitudinal study to understand how pre-school children develop mathematical skills overtime during their transition from pre-school to primary school education, considering social and cognitive factors that may influence mathematical development.