ENCOURAGING CHILDREN TO COUNT

Preschool and infant-school children are often claimed to learn about number from their experiences of counting but several studies show the y neither count to answer questions about number nor rely on informati on from counting if it conflicts with other strategies. Explanations o f children's failure to count arc reviewed and two studies comparing m ethods of encouraging children to count are reported. Yemeni children aged between 5 and 8 years and English children aged between 3 and 5 y ears were all encouraged to count by methods which emphasized that cou nting yielded the right relative number judgement and that it yielded the same judgement as matching. The older children also showed a very marked improvement in their judgements. These results suggest that chi ldren do not count either because they do not know how much better cou nting is than other strategies for comparing number or because they ar e not confident that they can use counting to derive accurate judgemen ts.