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Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number
How do children form beliefs about the infinity of space, time, and number? We asked whether children held similar beliefs about infinity across domains, and whether beliefs in infinity for domains like space and time might be scaffolded upon numerical knowledge (e.g., knowledge successors within th...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MIT Press
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10575555/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37840760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00104 |
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author | Sullivan, Jessica Cramer-Benjamin, Sophie Alvarez, Joseph Barner, David |
author_facet | Sullivan, Jessica Cramer-Benjamin, Sophie Alvarez, Joseph Barner, David |
author_sort | Sullivan, Jessica |
collection | PubMed |
description | How do children form beliefs about the infinity of space, time, and number? We asked whether children held similar beliefs about infinity across domains, and whether beliefs in infinity for domains like space and time might be scaffolded upon numerical knowledge (e.g., knowledge successors within the count list). To test these questions, 112 U.S. children (aged 4;0–7;11) completed an interview regarding their beliefs about infinite space, time, and number. We also measured their knowledge of counting, and other factors that might impact performance on linguistic assessments of infinity belief (e.g., working memory, ability to respond to hypothetical questions). We found that beliefs about infinity were very high across all three domains, suggesting that infinity beliefs may arise early in development for space, time, and number. Second, we found that—across all three domains—children were more likely to believe that it is always possible to add a unit than to believe that the domain is endless. Finally, we found that understanding the rules underlying counting predicted children’s belief that it is always possible to add 1 to any number, but did not predict any of the other elements of infinity belief. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10575555 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MIT Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105755552023-10-14 Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number Sullivan, Jessica Cramer-Benjamin, Sophie Alvarez, Joseph Barner, David Open Mind (Camb) Research Article How do children form beliefs about the infinity of space, time, and number? We asked whether children held similar beliefs about infinity across domains, and whether beliefs in infinity for domains like space and time might be scaffolded upon numerical knowledge (e.g., knowledge successors within the count list). To test these questions, 112 U.S. children (aged 4;0–7;11) completed an interview regarding their beliefs about infinite space, time, and number. We also measured their knowledge of counting, and other factors that might impact performance on linguistic assessments of infinity belief (e.g., working memory, ability to respond to hypothetical questions). We found that beliefs about infinity were very high across all three domains, suggesting that infinity beliefs may arise early in development for space, time, and number. Second, we found that—across all three domains—children were more likely to believe that it is always possible to add a unit than to believe that the domain is endless. Finally, we found that understanding the rules underlying counting predicted children’s belief that it is always possible to add 1 to any number, but did not predict any of the other elements of infinity belief. MIT Press 2023-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10575555/ /pubmed/37840760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00104 Text en © 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Sullivan, Jessica Cramer-Benjamin, Sophie Alvarez, Joseph Barner, David Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number |
title | Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number |
title_full | Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number |
title_fullStr | Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number |
title_full_unstemmed | Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number |
title_short | Everything is Infinite: Children’s Beliefs About Endless Space, Time, and Number |
title_sort | everything is infinite: children’s beliefs about endless space, time, and number |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10575555/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37840760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00104 |
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