3-122 - The effects of cultural and linguistic experience on number word learning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Over forty years of research has established that children learn the meanings of number words in a surprisingly reliable, stage-like trajectory. English-speaking children in the US learn meanings for “one”, “two”, and “three” in a protracted sequence between the ages of 2 and 3, and learn the cardinal principle – that the last word in a count labels a set’s cardinality – between 3 and 4. Little is known about what drives these developmental changes – e.g., why children differ in their learning trajectories, and how different types of linguistic and cultural experiences affect number word learning. This symposium investigates the causes of change by (1) testing learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and (2) examining how differences in linguistic experience affect learning. Paper 1 investigates the farmer-horticulturalist Tsimane’ group in Bolivia, and finds that knowledge of the cardinal principle, but not of smaller numbers, is predicted by familiarity with the count list. Paper 2 tests bilingual learners in the US, and finds that children who know the cardinal principle in one language frequently know it in their second language too, though knowledge of one, two, and three does not transfer between languages. Paper 3 reports that, naturalistically, parental talk about “high” numbers (4-10) is more related to number word knowledge than talk about “low” numbers (1-3), but that experimental training with small or large numbers affects learning equally. Finally, Paper 4 explores how children learn that every number has a successor, and thus that numbers are infinite.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• David A Barner, University of California, San Diego

Individual Presentations

• Number word acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group - Presenting Author: Steven Piantadosi; Julian Jara-Ettinger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Transfer of number concepts in bilingual learners - Presenting Author: Katherine Kimura, University of California, Berkeley; Katie Wagner, Ucsd; Pierina Cheung, Psychology

• Number Word Learning: A Parent-Driven Training Study - Presenting Author: Dominic Gibson, University of Chicago; Elizabeth A Gunderson, Temple University; Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago

• Numbers never end: A study on children’s acquisition of the successor principle and its relation to the concept of infinity - Presenting Author: Pierina Cheung, Psychology; David A Barner, University of California, San Diego