notes-cog-development-developmentNotes

Numbers

" In the early 1990s, Wynn (1990, 1992) first reported that children learn the meanings of cardinal number words one at a time and in order. Wynn showed this using the “Give-N” or “Give-a-number” task, in which she asked children to give her a certain number of items (e.g., “Give me one fish”; “Give me three fish,” etc.). She found that children’s performance moved through a predictable series of levels. At the earliest (“pre-number-knower”) level, children do not distinguish among the different number words. Pre-number knowers might give one object for every number requested, or they might give a handful of objects for every number, but they show no sign of knowing the exact meaning of any number word. At the next level (called the “one-knower” level), children know that “one” means 1. On the Give-N task, one-knowers give exactly one object when asked for “one,” and they give two or more objects when asked for any other number. After this comes the “two-knower” level, where children give one object for “one,” and two objects for “two,” but do not reliably produce larger sets. This is followed by a “three-knower” level and (although Wynn didn’t find it because she never asked children for four objects) a “four-knower” level. After the four-knower level, children seem to learn the meanings of the higher cardinal number words in a different way-inferring their meanings from their place in the counting list rather than learning them individually as they did with the small numbers (Carey, 2009). Children who have done this (i.e., who have figured out how the counting system represents cardinal numbers) are called “Cardinal-principle knowers.” " -- Barbara W. Sarnecka. On the relation between grammatical number and cardinal numbers in development