In the present study we examined whether children with Developmental Dyscalculia (DD) exhibit a deficit in the so-called "Approximate Number System" (ANS). To do so, we examined a group of elementary school children who demonstrated persistent low math achievement over 4 years and compared them to typically developing (TD), aged-matched…

Comparing numerical performance between different languages does not only mean comparing different number-word systems, but also implies a comparison of differences regarding culture or educational systems. The Czech language provides the remarkable opportunity to disentangle this confound as there exist two different number-word systems within…

Recently, the nature of children's mental number line has received much investigation. In the number line task, children are required to mark a presented number on a physical number line with fixed endpoints. Typically, it was observed that the estimations of younger/inexperienced children were accounted for best by a logarithmic function, whereas…

Ordinality is--beyond numerical magnitude (i.e., quantity)--an important characteristic of the number system. There is converging empirical evidence that (intra)parietal brain regions mediate number magnitude processing. Furthermore, recent findings suggest that the human intraparietal sulcus (IPS) supports magnitude and ordinality in a…

Adults can represent approximate numbers of items independently of language. This approximate number system can discriminate and compare entities as varied as dots, sounds, or actions. But can multiple different types of entities be enumerated in parallel and stored as independent numerosities? Subjects who were prevented from verbally counting…

In this study, Piagetian theory is extended to explore ways in which children construct their understanding of our notational system and place value. Eighty children aged 4 to 9 were asked to group objects, draw pictures of grouped quantities, write numerals to indicate amounts, and theorize about the relationship between their written numerals…

Teaching sequences designed to develop strategies for comparing numerals in grade two (in France) were analyzed. Children's strategies were noted, and an experiment confirmed underlying misconceptions concerning number. (MNS)

Children's reported use of single and multiple search strategies during a matching numbers task, along with accompanying verbal (private speech, self-talk) and motoric (finger pointing, place-holding) strategic behaviors were examined with a large, nationally representative cross-sectional sample ("n"=1,979) of children between the ages of 5 and…

A study explored the effectiveness of an instructional approach designed to help students establish connections between their understanding of the decimal system and the stardard symbols and procedural rules used to solve decimal problems. Ten children each in grades 4 through 6 participated. They were individually interviewed prior to and six…

This brief report from the Indigenous Mathematics Project focuses on the way in which numerical reasoning is changing in the Oksapmin community of Papua New Guinea as a function of participation in new social institutions: economic exchange with currency and enrollment in school. Each of these new institutions means that arithmetic problems are…