Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 19, 2026
11:25
Knowing What Counts: Unbiased Stereology in the Non-human Primate Brain
Published on: May 14, 2009
Knowledge of counting principles: how relevant is order irrelevance?
Deepthi Kamawar1, Jo-Anne Lefevre, Jeffrey Bisanz
1Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont, Canada. deepthi_kamawar@carleton.ca
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|October 2, 2009
Summary
Children develop counting skills by age 6, mastering one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinality. However, the principle of order irrelevance in counting develops later and may not be crucial for foundational number sense.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Child Psychology
- Mathematics Education
Background:
- Children aged 6+ typically grasp core counting principles: one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinality.
- These principles are fundamental for understanding numerosity and enumerating sets of objects.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the developmental trajectory of the counting principle of order irrelevance in children.
- To determine the age at which children understand that the order of counting objects does not affect the total count.
Main Methods:
- A study involving children aged 5 to 11 years.
- Assessing children's understanding of the order irrelevance principle in counting tasks.
- Analyzing the relationship between order irrelevance knowledge and numeration skills.
Main Results:
- Most children aged 5-11 believed the counting order mattered, preferring left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequences.
- Only older children (10-11 years) demonstrated understanding of order irrelevance.
- Knowledge of order irrelevance was not correlated with overall counting ability.
Conclusions:
- The principle of order irrelevance is acquired later than other essential counting principles.
- This principle may not be a significant factor in the early conceptual development of counting skills.
- Further research could explore the nuances of order irrelevance acquisition and its impact on mathematical understanding.
More Related Videos
12:12Irrelevant Stimuli and Action Control: Analyzing the Influence of Ignored Stimuli via the Distractor-Response Binding Paradigm
Published on: May 14, 2014
16:23Automated, Quantitative Cognitive/Behavioral Screening of Mice: For Genetics, Pharmacology, Animal Cognition and Undergraduate Instruction
Published on: February 26, 2014
Related Concept Videos
01:27Real Number Operations
The concept of real numbers includes all the values that can be represented on a continuous number line. The system began with basic counting values used for enumeration. It later expanded to include values that represent the absence of quantity and opposites of the counting values. When situations required expressing parts of a whole or dividing quantities evenly, values capable of representing such proportions were developed. When written using decimal notation, these values can end or repeat...
00:55Ordinal Level of Measurement
The way a set of data is measured is called its level of measurement. Correct statistical procedures depend on a researcher being familiar with levels of measurement. For analysis, data are classified into four levels of measurement—nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
Data measured using an ordinal scale are similar to nominal scale data, but there is one major difference. The ordinal scale data can be ordered. An example of ordinal scale data is a list of the top five national parks in the...
Data measured using an ordinal scale are similar to nominal scale data, but there is one major difference. The ordinal scale data can be ordered. An example of ordinal scale data is a list of the top five national parks in the...
01:03Serial Position Effect
The serial position effect is a cognitive phenomenon where individuals are more likely to recall the first and last items in a list compared to those in the middle. This effect is divided into the primacy effect and the recency effect. The primacy effect is observed when the initial items in a list are remembered better. This occurs because these items are rehearsed more frequently or receive more elaborative processing, allowing them to be encoded into long-term memory more effectively. For...
01:21Critical Numbers and the Closed Interval Method
Understanding the maximum and minimum values of a function is essential for analyzing its overall behavior. These values, often referred to as extrema, provide insight into how a function behaves across its domain. In mathematical terms, extrema can be either local—representing peaks and valleys within a limited region—or absolute, indicating the highest or lowest points over an entire interval.A function’s extrema occur at critical numbers, which are values in the domain where the derivative...
01:21Gestalt Principles of Perception
Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...
01:11Statistical Analysis: Overview
When we take repeated measurements on the same or replicated samples, we will observe inconsistencies in the magnitude. These inconsistencies are called errors. To categorize and characterize these results and their errors, the researcher can use statistical analysis to determine the quality of the measurements and/or suitability of the methods.
One of the most commonly used statistical quantifiers is the mean, which is the ratio between the sum of the numerical values of all results and the...
One of the most commonly used statistical quantifiers is the mean, which is the ratio between the sum of the numerical values of all results and the...