Miscategorized subset-knowers: Five- and six-knowers can compare only the numbers they know

Area of Science:

• Cognitive development
• Numerical cognition
• Developmental psychology

Background:

• The Give a Number (GaN) task is used to assess initial symbolic number acquisition.
• Children knowing numbers 1-4 are typically classified as 'subset-knowers' with limited understanding.
• Children knowing larger numbers are often presumed to grasp number principles, even with gaps in knowledge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To challenge the assumption that knowing larger numbers on the GaN task implies a fundamental understanding of numbers.
• To investigate if children who know numbers beyond four, but not all numbers in their counting list, exhibit limited number comparison abilities.
• To propose stricter criteria for identifying knowledge of the cardinality principle.

Main Methods:

• Assessed the performance of children with varying GaN task results in a symbolic number comparison task.
• Compared the number comparison abilities of 'five- and six-knowers' with those of 'one- to four-knowers'.

Main Results:

• Children identified as 'five-, six-, and so forth, knowers' demonstrated number comparison skills limited to the numbers they knew on the GaN task.
• This performance pattern mirrors that of 'one- to four-knowers'.

Conclusions:

• 'Five-, six-, and so forth, knowers' should be classified as subset-knowers due to fundamentally limited conceptual understanding of numbers.
• Current practices in the literature may miscategorize children's numerical understanding based on the GaN task.
• Stricter criteria are needed to accurately identify knowledge of the cardinality principle in young children.