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Varieties of quantity estimation in children.
Francesco Sella1, Ilaria Berteletti2, Daniela Lucangeli3
1Department of General Psychology, University of Padova.
Developmental Psychology
|May 27, 2015
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Numerical Cognition
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Children's number-to-position mapping shifts from nonlinear to linear with age.
- This is well-established for symbolic numbers but less understood for other quantities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how children estimate continuous, discrete nonsymbolic, and symbolic quantities.
- To compare developmental trajectories and strategies across different quantity types.
Main Methods:
- Preschool, Grade 1, and Grade 3 children mapped quantities onto a visual line.
- Quantities included continuous (area, shades of gray), discrete nonsymbolic (numerosities), and symbolic (Arabic numerals).
- Experiment 2 included non-spatial continuous quantities.
Main Results:
- Children consistently showed linear mapping for continuous quantities.
- A developmental shift from logarithmic to linear mapping occurred for both symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical quantities.
- Distinct strategies were identified for discrete nonsymbolic quantities, including reliance on numerosity versus spatial extent.
Conclusions:
- Estimation of numerical and non-numerical quantities involves different processing strategies.
- These different quantity estimations follow distinct developmental trajectories in children.
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