Relationships between approximate number system acuity and early symbolic number abilities

The present study assessed the relationships between approximate and exact number abilities in children with little formal instruction to ask (1) whether individual differences in acuity of the approximate system are related to basic abilities with symbolic numbers; and (2) whether the link between non-symbolic and symbolic number performance changes over the development. To address these questions, four different age groups of 3- to 6-year-old children were asked to compare pairs of train wagons varying on numerical ratio, as well as to complete exact tasks including number words or Arabic numbers. When correlation analyses were conducted across age groups, results indicated that performance in numerosity comparison was associated with mastery of symbolic numbers, even when short-term memory, IQ and age were controlled for. Separate analyses by age group revealed that the precision in numerosity discrimination was related to both number word and Arabic number knowledge but differently across the development.