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ERIC Number: EJ1467260
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2363-8761
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Do Preschoolers Use Rules to Represent Their Count List?
Jess Sullivan; Joseph Alvarez; Sophie Cramer-Benjamin; Sadie Holcomb; Melissa Nolan; Alex Morabito; David Barner
Journal of Numerical Cognition, v11 Article e14757 2025
When children first learn to count, what do they understand about the structure of the count system? The present study investigated English-speaking children's ability to generalize the rules that structure their count list to novel contexts. A total of N = 86 children (3;0-6;11) completed a battery of tasks aimed at measuring their understanding of the English count list: they counted as high as they could, and were asked to generate successors to English numbers (e.g., "Fifty-seven: what comes next?"). Next, they were introduced to novel decade terms, and were asked to generate successors to numbers containing those terms (e.g., "Blicky-seven: what comes next?"). Children's ability to generate successors was predicted by their counting ability, and a sizeable subset of children were able to generate successors both for novel numbers and for English numbers outside their productive count range. These data suggest that emerging counters can use their understanding of the structure of the English count list to generate successors to unfamiliar numbers.
Leibniz Institute for Psychology. Universitatsring 15, Trier, 54296, Germany. e-mail: support@psychopen.eu; Web site: https://jnc.psychopen.eu
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1749524; 1749518
Data File: URL: https://osf.io/9uwhz/
Author Affiliations: N/A