MAKING NUMBERS COUNT - THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF NUMERICAL INFERENCES

Two experiments examined preschool children's ability to draw inferenc es about numerosity from correspondences between sets. In Experiment 1 , 3- and 4-year-old children made numerical inferences about a hidden set from their own counts of a corresponding visible set and also from numerical information about that set stated by the experimenter. Expe riment 2 contrasted a count condition with a move condition, in which children's attention was not explicitly drawn to the numerosity of the visible set. Again, children were able to make numerical inferences a s early as 3 years of age. However, differences between the 2 conditio ns implicate production deficiencies in young children's use of counti ng as a problem-solving strategy when they are not explicitly told to count.