When one-two-three beats two-one-three: Tracking the acquisition of the verbal number sequence

The importance of spatial language for early numerical development in preschool: Going beyond verbal number skills

Recent evidence suggests that spatial language in preschool positively affects the development of verbal number skills, as indexed by aggregated performances on counting and number naming tasks. We firstly aimed to specify whether spatial language (the knowledge of locative prepositions) significantly relates to both of these measures. In addition, we assessed whether the predictive value of spatial language extends beyond verbal number skills to numerical subdomains without explicit verbal component, such as number writing, symbolic magnitude classifications, ordinal judgments and numerosity comparisons. To determine the unique contributions of spatial language to these numerical skills, we controlled in our regression analyses for intrinsic and extrinsic spatial abilities, phonological awareness as well as age, socioeconomic status and home language. With respect to verbal number skills, it appeared that spatial language uniquely predicted forward and backward counting but not number naming, which was significantly affected only by phonological awareness. Regarding numerical tasks that do not contain explicit verbal components, spatial language did not relate to number writing or numerosity comparisons. Conversely, it explained unique variance in symbolic magnitude classifications and was the only predictor of ordinal judgments. These findings thus highlight the importance of spatial language for early numerical development beyond verbal number skills and suggest that the knowledge of spatial terms is especially relevant for processing cardinal and ordinal relations between symbolic numbers. Promoting spatial language in preschool might thus be an interesting avenue for fostering the acquisition of these symbolic numerical skills prior to formal schooling.

Acquisition of the counting principles during the subset-knower stages: Insights from children's errors

Studies on children's understanding of counting examine when and how children acquire the cardinal principle: the idea that the last word in a counted set reflects the cardinal value of the set. Using Wynn's (1990) Give-N Task, researchers classify children who can count to generate large sets as having acquired the cardinal principle (cardinal-principle-knowers) and those who cannot as lacking knowledge of it (subset-knowers). However, recent studies have provided a more nuanced view of number word acquisition. Here, we explore this view by examining the developmental progression of the counting principles with an aim to elucidate the gradual elements that lead to children successfully generating sets and being classified as CP-knowers on the Give-N Task. Specifically, we test the claim that subset-knowers lack cardinal principle knowledge by separating children's understanding of the cardinal principle from their ability to apply and implement counting procedures. We also ask when knowledge of Gelman & Gallistel's (1978) other how-to-count principles emerge in development. We analyzed how often children violated the three how-to-count principles in a secondary analysis of Give-N data (N = 86). We found that children already have knowledge of the cardinal principle prior to becoming CP-knowers, and that understanding of the stable-order and word-object correspondence principles likely emerged earlier. These results suggest that gradual development may best characterize children's acquisition of the counting principles and that learning to coordinate all three principles represents an additional step beyond learning them individually.