Poster #42 - Cardinal principle knowledge contributes to parsing complex numerals

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Infinitely many numbers can be expressed by a finite set of numerals. This critical property of natural numbers expressed in a base system is enabled by the syntactic structure of complex numerals. Thus, understanding how children comprehend this numerical syntax is key to understanding how they acquire the meaning of natural numbers. In this study, we investigated whether and how children understand a large numerical value, beyond their count list, by exploiting the syntax of the complex numeral representing that value.
We devised a novel number comparison task and tested monolingual Korean speaking children (N = 65; age: 3;5 - 6;5). Unlike many Indo-European languages, the expression of complex numerals is highly regular in the Sino-Korean numeral system (e.g., the number 65 is represented as six ten five), making it ideal for this task. In this task, children heard two numbers and verbally responded to choose the greater of the two. Children compared two numbers in ones (e.g., eight vs. five), compared two numbers in tens with the identical tens value (e.g., six ten five vs. six ten eight), and compared two numbers in hundreds with the identical hundreds value and without the tens value (e.g., two hundred five vs. two hundred eight). On the one hand, if a child is able to parse a number phrase according to its syntactic structure (e.g., [[six ten] eight] and [[two hundred] eight]), she should be able to perform well in the tens and the hundreds conditions. On the other hand, a child who cannot parse the number phrase will perform at chance especially on the complex numeral conditions. In order to isolate those who have a limited count list (below the numbers used in the tens and the hundreds conditions), children were given an abstract counting task. In addition, children’s cardinal principle (CP) knowledge was tested using the Give-a-number task (Wynn, 1990).
Children with a limited counting ability (N = 49), on average, performed better than chance in the ones (M: 68%, p = .000) and hundreds (M: 57%, p = .029) conditions but not in the tens (M: 53%, p = .409) condition, indicating that their understanding of numerical syntax is surprisingly better in the hundreds than in the tens. Then, we tested to what extent the large variation in children’s performance measures is explained by their CP knowledge. Regression models showed children’s performance in all the conditions, while controlling for age, were strongly predicted by their CP knowledge (ones: p = .000, tens: p = .03; hundreds: p = .000), suggesting that those who understand the meaning of number words are better at parsing complex numerals. In sum, these results suggest that children’s acquisition of the cardinality principle knowledge is an important step to comprehending the syntax of complex numerals, far beyond their count list.

Authors

• Jihyun Hwang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Diego Guerrero, University of Massachusetts
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joonkoo Park, University of Massachusetts
  Non-Presenting Author