NUMBERS, THOUGHTS, AND THINGS - THE ONTOLOGY OF NUMBERS FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS

Keil's predicability method for studying ontological categories was ad apted to examine the conceptions of numbers of 5-year-old children ver sus adults. Our primary focus was on the ontological distinction betwe en numbers and sets of objects, which is clearly in place by age 5 and continues to organize adults' ontological judgments about numbers. Ch ildren, like, adults, attribute spatial-arrangement properties to coll ections much more than to numbers, although they see both numbers and collections as having quantitative properties. Children were also simi lar to adults in that they equated numbers more closely with their wri tten representations (numerals) than with spoken representations (numb er words).