Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
918595 Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 2009 13 Pages PDF
Abstract

Researchers have long disagreed about whether number concepts are essentially continuous (unchanging) or discontinuous over development. Among those who take the discontinuity position, there is disagreement about how development proceeds. The current study addressed these questions with new quantitative analyses of children’s incorrect responses on the Give-N task. Using data from 280 children, ages 2 to 4 years, this study showed that most wrong answers were simply guesses, not counting or estimation errors. Their mean was unrelated to the target number, and they were lower-bounded by the numbers children actually knew. In addition, children learned the number-word meanings one at a time and in order; they treated the number words as mutually exclusive; and once they figured out the cardinal principle of counting, they generalized this principle to the rest of their count list. Findings support the ‘discontinuity’ account of number development in general and the ‘knower-levels’ account in particular.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Psychology Developmental and Educational Psychology
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