A longitudinal study on basic numerical skills in early numerical development

Basic numerical skills underlie children's numerical development. In this follow-up study, we investigated the associations between the development of counting, cardinality understanding, and awareness of structures in quantities in children at the age of 4;7 and 5;3 years. We assumed that the ability to consider structures in quantities should allow children to capture the cardinality of non-symbolic quantities more efficiently and thus moderate the development of counting and cardinality understanding. We assessed 57 (32 girls) children in a pretest at about four and a half years of age and again in a posttest six months later. Results showed that structured quantities were captured more efficiently than unstructured quantities which might have been counted. Moreover, results substantiated the mediating role of considering structures in quantities on the development of children's counting and cardinality understanding. As such, this follow-up study indicated beneficial contributions of awareness of structures on the development of counting and cardinality understanding. This may suggest that introducing structured quantities early on in elementary math education might be sensible.