Children's intuitive sense of number develops independently of their perception of area, density, length, and time

Developmental Science
Darko Odic

Abstract

Young children can quickly and intuitively represent the number of objects in a visual scene through the Approximate Number System (ANS). The precision of the ANS - indexed as the most difficult ratio of two numbers that children can reliably discriminate - is well known to improve with development: whereas infants require relatively large ratios to discriminate number, children can discriminate finer and finer changes in number between toddlerhood and early adulthood. Which factors drive the developmental improvements in ANS precision? Here, we investigate the influence of four non-numeric dimensions - area, density, line length, and time - on ANS development, exploring the degree to which the ANS develops independently from these other dimensions, from inhibitory control, and from domain-general factors such as attention and working memory that are shared between these tasks. A sample of 185 children between the ages of 2 and 12 years completed five discrimination tasks: approximate number, area, density, length, and time. We report three main findings. First, logistic growth models applied to both accuracy and Weber fractions (w; an index of ANS precision) across age reveal distinct developmental trajectories across the five...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 7, 2019·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Fiona SimmonsRuth S Ogden
Dec 13, 2019·The Behavioral and Brain Sciences·Karina Hamamouche
Feb 23, 2020·Frontiers in Psychology·Alexis Wellwood
Sep 26, 2020·Frontiers in Psychology·Melissa E LibertusJustin Halberda
Oct 20, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Karina HamamoucheSara Cordes
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Jul 7, 2020·Cognition·Rachel C TomlinsonElizabeth M Brannon
Nov 19, 2019·Cognition·Maria Dolores de HeviaMaria Eirini Netskou
Oct 29, 2021·PloS One·Antonya Marie GonzalezAndrew Scott Baron
Apr 13, 2021·The Behavioral and Brain Sciences·Sam Clarke, Jacob Beck
Dec 16, 2021·The Behavioral and Brain Sciences·Denitza Dramkin, Darko Odic
Dec 16, 2021·The Behavioral and Brain Sciences·Sam Clarke, Jacob Beck

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