DO PRESCHOOL-CHILDREN RECOGNIZE AUDITORY-VISUAL NUMERICAL CORRESPONDENCES

The present study investigated the ability of 3- and 4-year-old childr en to perform tasks which require matching sets of sounds to numerical ly equivalent visual displays. We found that 3-year-olds performed at chance on the auditory-visual matching task, while 4-year-olds perform ed significantly above chance. There is evidence that mastery of the l inguistic counting system is related to success on this task. These fi ndings are unexpected given previous research reporting that 6-8-month -olds can detect the numerical equivalence between a set of sounds and items in a visual display.