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Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers

Recent evidence suggests that infants and toddlers may recognize counting as numerically relevant long before they are able to count or understand the cardinal meaning of number words. The Give-N task, which asks children to produce sets of objects in different quantities, is commonly used to test c...

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Autores principales: Silver, Alex M., Elliott, Leanne, Braham, Emily J., Bachman, Heather J., Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth, Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S., Cabrera, Natasha, Libertus, Melissa E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8329077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34354646
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703598
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author Silver, Alex M.
Elliott, Leanne
Braham, Emily J.
Bachman, Heather J.
Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth
Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S.
Cabrera, Natasha
Libertus, Melissa E.
author_facet Silver, Alex M.
Elliott, Leanne
Braham, Emily J.
Bachman, Heather J.
Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth
Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S.
Cabrera, Natasha
Libertus, Melissa E.
author_sort Silver, Alex M.
collection PubMed
description Recent evidence suggests that infants and toddlers may recognize counting as numerically relevant long before they are able to count or understand the cardinal meaning of number words. The Give-N task, which asks children to produce sets of objects in different quantities, is commonly used to test children’s cardinal number knowledge and understanding of exact number words but does not capture children’s preliminary understanding of number words and is difficult to administer remotely. Here, we asked whether toddlers correctly map number words to the referred quantities in a two-alternative forced choice Point-to-X task (e.g., “Which has three?”). Two- to three-year-old toddlers (N = 100) completed a Give-N task and a Point-to-X task through in-person testing or online via videoconferencing software. Across number-word trials in Point-to-X, toddlers pointed to the correct image more often than predicted by chance, indicating that they had some understanding of the prompted number word that allowed them to rule out incorrect responses, despite limited understanding of exact cardinal values. No differences in Point-to-X performance were seen for children tested in-person versus remotely. Children with better understanding of exact number words as indicated on the Give-N task also answered more trials correctly in Point-to-X. Critically, in-depth analyses of Point-to-X performance for children who were identified as 1- or 2-knowers on Give-N showed that 1-knowers do not show a preliminary understanding of numbers above their knower-level, whereas 2-knowers do. As researchers move to administering assessments remotely, the Point-to-X task promises to be an easy-to-administer alternative to Give-N for measuring children’s emerging number knowledge and capturing nuances in children’s number-word knowledge that Give-N may miss.
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spelling pubmed-83290772021-08-04 Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers Silver, Alex M. Elliott, Leanne Braham, Emily J. Bachman, Heather J. Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S. Cabrera, Natasha Libertus, Melissa E. Front Psychol Psychology Recent evidence suggests that infants and toddlers may recognize counting as numerically relevant long before they are able to count or understand the cardinal meaning of number words. The Give-N task, which asks children to produce sets of objects in different quantities, is commonly used to test children’s cardinal number knowledge and understanding of exact number words but does not capture children’s preliminary understanding of number words and is difficult to administer remotely. Here, we asked whether toddlers correctly map number words to the referred quantities in a two-alternative forced choice Point-to-X task (e.g., “Which has three?”). Two- to three-year-old toddlers (N = 100) completed a Give-N task and a Point-to-X task through in-person testing or online via videoconferencing software. Across number-word trials in Point-to-X, toddlers pointed to the correct image more often than predicted by chance, indicating that they had some understanding of the prompted number word that allowed them to rule out incorrect responses, despite limited understanding of exact cardinal values. No differences in Point-to-X performance were seen for children tested in-person versus remotely. Children with better understanding of exact number words as indicated on the Give-N task also answered more trials correctly in Point-to-X. Critically, in-depth analyses of Point-to-X performance for children who were identified as 1- or 2-knowers on Give-N showed that 1-knowers do not show a preliminary understanding of numbers above their knower-level, whereas 2-knowers do. As researchers move to administering assessments remotely, the Point-to-X task promises to be an easy-to-administer alternative to Give-N for measuring children’s emerging number knowledge and capturing nuances in children’s number-word knowledge that Give-N may miss. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-07-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8329077/ /pubmed/34354646 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703598 Text en Copyright © 2021 Silver, Elliott, Braham, Bachman, Votruba-Drzal, Tamis-LeMonda, Cabrera and Libertus. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Silver, Alex M.
Elliott, Leanne
Braham, Emily J.
Bachman, Heather J.
Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth
Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S.
Cabrera, Natasha
Libertus, Melissa E.
Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers
title Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers
title_full Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers
title_fullStr Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers
title_full_unstemmed Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers
title_short Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers
title_sort measuring emerging number knowledge in toddlers
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8329077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34354646
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703598
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