3-178 - The development of numerical approximation: Pre-verbal abilities, verbal number estimation, and preschool mathematics

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Many researchers have proposed that the Approximate Number System (ANS), a pre-verbal capacity to discriminate between numbers of items, forms the basis for humans’ verbal, symbolic mathematics (e.g., Dehaene, 1997; Halberda, Mazzocco & Feigenson, 2008; Izard, et al., 2009). This symposium probes the development of ANS acuity and mechanistic links between ANS acuity and math achievement.

The first paper shows that the ability to selectively attend to number while inhibiting non-numerical features (element size and spacing) improved from ages 4 to 6; among 6-year-olds, selective attention to number was related to individual differences in mathematics ability. The second paper shows that preschoolers’ ANS acuity and object-tracking ability (another pre-verbal system purported to underlie cardinality knowledge, Carey, 2009) both predicted cardinality knowledge early in preschool, but only ANS acuity predicted change in cardinality over time. The third paper shows that even before learning the cardinal principle, children were able to estimate numbers using speech and gesture; verbal-number-estimation ability improved with age independent of cardinal-number-word knowledge. The fourth paper shows that preschoolers’ verbal-number-estimation ability predicted math ability and mediated the relation between ANS acuity and math ability.

This symposium elucidates the critical role of the ANS in preschool math learning. Using a combination of longitudinal and experimental methods, these papers highlight contributors to ANS acuity (i.e., inhibiting non-numerical features) as well as skills linking ANS acuity to formal math achievement (i.e., verbal-number-estimation). By more precisely understanding these phenomena, we may be able to design effective interventions to promote school readiness in mathematics.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Elizabeth A Gunderson, Temple University

Individual Presentations

• The role of non-numerical stimulus features in the development of the number sense - Presenting Author: Ariel Starr, Duke University; Nicholas K. DeWind, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Neurobiology, Duke University; Elizabeth M Brannon, Duke University

• Attaching meaning to the number words: What mechanism underlies children’s cardinal knowledge? - Presenting Author: Kristy vanMarle, Univeristy of Missouri - Columbia; Yi Mou, University of Missouri, Columbia; Felicia W Chu, University of Missouri, Columbia; David C Geary, Univ of Missouri-Columbia

• Numerical approximation in preschool using number gestures and number words - Presenting Author: Elizabeth A Gunderson, Temple University; Elizabet Spaepen, University of Chicago; Dominic Gibson, University of Chicago; Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago; Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago

• Verbal number estimation predicts math ability and mediates the relation between numerical approximation and math ability - Presenting Author: Melissa E Libertus, Univ of Pittsburgh; Darko Odic, Psychology and Brain Sciences; Lisa Feigenson, Johns Hopkins University; Justin Halberda