Measuring Emerging Number Knowledge in Toddlers.

Recent evidence suggests that infants and toddlers may recognize counting as numerically relevant long before they are able to count or understand the cardinal meaning of number words. The Give-N task, which asks children to produce sets of objects in different quantities, is commonly used to test children's cardinal number knowledge and understanding of exact number words but does not capture children's preliminary understanding of number words and is difficult to administer remotely. Here, we asked whether toddlers correctly map number words to the referred quantities in a two-alternative forced choice Point-to-X task (e.

No intrinsic gender differences in children's earliest numerical abilities.

Recent public discussions have suggested that the under-representation of women in science and mathematics careers can be traced back to intrinsic differences in aptitude. However, true gender differences are difficult to assess because sociocultural influences enter at an early point in childhood. If these claims of intrinsic differences are true, then gender differences in quantitative and mathematical abilities should emerge early in human development.

Using Hierarchical Linear Models to Examine Approximate Number System Acuity: The Role of Trial-Level and Participant-Level Characteristics.

The ability to intuitively and quickly compare the number of items in collections without counting is thought to rely on the Approximate Number System (ANS). To assess individual differences in the precision of peoples' ANS representations, researchers often use non-symbolic number comparison tasks in which participants quickly choose the numerically larger of two arrays of dots. However, some researchers debate whether this task actually measures the ability to discriminate approximate numbers or instead measures the ability to discriminate other continuous magnitude dimensions that are often confounded with number (e.

18-month outcomes of heterologous bilateral hand transplantation in a child: a case report.

Background: Although heterologous vascular composite allotransplantation has become a burgeoning treatment option for adult amputees, there have been no successful cases previously reported in children. Here, we describe the surgical, immunological, and neurorehabilitation details with functional outcomes 18 months after heterologous bilateral hand and forearm transplantation in an 8-year-old child with quadrimembral amputations and a previous kidney transplant.

Methods: 2 years of extensive preparation by medical and surgical teams preceded the hand-forearm transplantation of this child.

Children's spontaneous focus on number before and after guided parent-child interactions in a children's museum.

Little is known about whether and how parents can foster their children's spontaneous focus on number, an unprompted measure of attention to small numbers of objects that predicts later math achievement. In the current study, we asked 54 preschool-aged children and their parents to play together in a children's museum exhibit using either a numerical prompt or a nonnumerical prompt (control condition). Before and after playing with their parent, children completed assessments to measure individual differences in their tendency to spontaneously focus on number.

When approximate number acuity predicts math performance: The moderating role of math anxiety.

Separate lines of research suggest that people who are better at estimating numerical quantities using the approximate number system (ANS) have better math performance, and that people with high levels of math anxiety have worse math performance. Only a handful of studies have examined both ANS acuity and math anxiety in the same participants and those studies report contradictory results. To address these inconsistencies, in the current study 87 undergraduate students completed assessments of ANS acuity, math anxiety, and three different measures of math.

Intergenerational associations of the approximate number system in toddlers and their parents.

From birth, humans are able to discriminate quantities using the approximate number system (ANS). However, previous methods have only been suitable to examine ANS functioning in infancy and older children. The goals of this study were twofold: first, to modify an existing method of assessing ANS functioning for toddlerhood; and second, to investigate individual differences in toddlers' ANS performance by examining correlations with their parents' ANS acuity.

Infants discriminate number: Evidence against the prerequisite of visual object individuation and the primacy of continuous magnitude.

Leibovich et al. hypothesize that the absence of visual object individuation limits infants' numerical skills and necessitates a reliance on continuous magnitudes. We argue that parallels between infants' numerical discrimination in the visual and auditory modalities, their abilities to match numerosities across modalities, and their greater ability to discriminate changes in number compared with continuous magnitudes contradict the authors' assumptions.

Understanding sources of individual variability in parents' number talk with young children.

Several studies suggest that parents' use of number words while talking with their children is positively related to children's understanding of certain mathematical concepts. In this study, we extended these findings and further examined several parent characteristics that could be related to individual differences in their number talk, including their subjective ratings of their math skills, preference for using math, beliefs about the importance of their children's math skills, and numerical approximation abilities, an early number skill present in children and adults. A sample of 44 5- and 6-year-old children and their parents completed a variety of laboratory-based tasks, including a 10-min free play session to assess number talk, a standardized math assessment for children, a nonsymbolic numerical comparison task for parents, and several questionnaires for parents.

Intergenerational associations in numerical approximation and mathematical abilities.

Although growing evidence suggests a link between children's math skills and their ability to estimate numerical quantities using the approximate number system (ANS), little is known about the sources underlying individual differences in ANS acuity and their relation with specific mathematical skills. To examine the role of intergenerational transmission of these abilities from parents to children, the current study assessed the ANS acuities and math abilities of 54 children (5-8 years old) and their parents, as well as parents' expectations about children's math skills. Children's ANS acuity positively correlated with their parents' ANS acuity, and children's math abilities were predicted by unique combinations of parents' ANS acuity and math ability depending on the specific math skill in question.