Children's understanding of number words.

This research notes gives details of an atypical response to a 'give a number' task by a 34-month-old child. The child clearly demonstrated that he understood the word 'two' to refer to an object rather than to a quantity. This incident offers support to Fuson's (1988) theory of the functionally specific initial acquisition of number word meanings and suggests that Gelman & Meck's (1983) 'principles first' account of the development of counting gives insufficient weight to the role of language and social interaction in the development of early number understanding. The incident also shows that our knowledge of this area of development would benefit from a greater emphasis on longitudinal studies, studies of social context and studies of individual differences in the processes of acquisition.