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.