ERIC Number: EJ810117
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Sep
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-0277
EISSN: N/A
How Counting Represents Number: What Children Must Learn and When They Learn It
Sarnecka, Barbara W.; Carey, Susan
Cognition, v108 n3 p662-674 Sep 2008
This study compared 2- to 4-year-olds who understand how counting works ("cardinal-principle-knowers") to those who do not ("subset-knowers"), in order to better characterize the knowledge itself. New results are that (1) Many children answer the question "how many" with the last word used in counting, despite not understanding how counting works; (2) Only children who have mastered the cardinal principle, or are just short of doing so, understand that adding objects to a set means moving forward in the numeral list whereas subtracting objects mean going backward; and finally (3) Only cardinal-principle-knowers understand that adding exactly 1 object to a set means moving forward exactly 1 word in the list, whereas subset-knowers do not understand the unit of change. (Contains 5 figures and 2 tables.)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A