Study On Number Word Acquisition And The Mapping Between Number Words And Approximate Number System Representations Of Children

Humans can use two systems to represent and process numerical information,i.e.,the Exact Number System,which relies on language,acquired slowly for years,or Approximate Number System（ANS）,which is innate and independent from language and external symbols.The exact number word acquisition follows a slow but stereotyped progression.Two important aspects of children’s numerical development are to construct some sort of mapping between number words and ANS representations and to acquire the Cardinality Principle（CP）.However,the developmental sequence of these two skills is debated.With the aim to investigate the developmental trajectories of number word acquisition,especially CP acquisition,and the mapping between number words and ANS representations,the current study tested 3-to 6-year-old Chinese children on the counting task,the CP task（Give-N task）and two mapping tasks（Fast Dots task and Beat-the-Drum task）.Junior kindergarteners（age:3-4）attended retests of these tasks with an additional calculation task with a 6-month interval.The study yielded several interesting findings.First,Middle kindergarteners（age:4-5）and Senior kindergarteners（age:5-6）had generally acquired CP,while Junior kindergarteners varied in their knower-levels,but their number word knowledge developed rapidly.Second,both Three-＆ Four-knowers（children who hadn’t yet acquired CP）and CP-knowers（children who had acquired CP）showed a linear relation between number words and approximate numerosities on both mapping tasks.Besides,among the CP-knowers,only the AW-mappers（who map ANS representations to number words successfully）,but not the AW-nonmappers（who failed to map from ANS representations to number words）,have established the mapping in both two directions.These findings indicate that the acquisition of CP is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the development of the mapping between number words and ANS representations.Third,compared to ANS-to-Word task,CP-knowers showed a more optimal linear relation between number words and approximate numerosities on Word-to-ANS task.Among the CP-knowers,AW-nonmappers showed a mapping on Word-to-ANS task,which reveals that Word-to-ANS mapping emerges prior to ANS-to-Word mapping,and functions more accurately than the latter one.Fourth,Junior kindergarteners gradually developed mapping from ANS-to-Word,but not from Word-to-ANS six months after Experiment One,indicating that children’s ANS-to-Word mapping develops more efficiently than Word-to-ANS mapping.The present study sheds light on the methodology of language acquisition methodology studies.Its findings have implications for promoting and assessing children’s development of language skills and number knowledge.