Moving Attention along the Mental Number Line in Preschool Age: Study of the Operational Momentum in 3- to 5-Year-Old Children's Non-Symbolic Arithmetic

Autor/inn/en	Haman, Maciej; Lipowska, Katarzyna
Titel	Moving Attention along the Mental Number Line in Preschool Age: Study of the Operational Momentum in 3- to 5-Year-Old Children's Non-Symbolic Arithmetic
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 24 (2021) 1, (15 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Haman, Maciej) ORCID (Lipowska, Katarzyna)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1467-7687
DOI	10.1111/desc.13007
Schlagwörter	Preschool Children; Arithmetic; Attention; Spatial Ability; Number Concepts; Computation; Reaction Time; Addition; Subtraction + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Addition; Arithmetik; Arithmetikunterricht; Rechnen; Aufmerksamkeit; Räumliches Vorstellungsvermögen; Number concept; Zahlbegriff; Reaktionsvermögen; Subtraktion
Abstract	People tend to underestimate subtraction and overestimate addition outcomes and to associate subtraction with the left side and addition with the right side. These two phenomena are collectively labeled 'operational momentum' (OM) and thought to have their origins in the same mechanism of 'moving attention along the mental number line'. OM in arithmetic has never been tested in children at the preschool age, which is critical for numerical development. In this study, 3-5 years old were tested with non-symbolic addition and subtraction tasks. Their level of understanding of counting principles (CP) was assessed using the give-a-number task. When the second operand's cardinality was 5 or 6 (Experiment 1), the child's reaction time was shorter in addition/subtraction tasks after cuing attention appropriately to the right/left. Adding/subtracting one element (Experiment 2) revealed a more complex developmental pattern. Before acquiring CP, the children showed generalized overestimation bias. Underestimation in addition and overestimation in subtraction emerged only after mastering CP. No clear spatial-directional OM pattern was found, however, the response time to rightward/leftward cues in addition/subtraction again depended on stage of mastering CP. Although the results support the hypothesis about engagement of spatial attention in early numerical processing, they point to at least partial independence of the spatial-directional and magnitude OM. This undermines the canonical version of the number line-based hypothesis. Mapping numerical magnitudes to space may be a complex process that undergoes reorganization during the period of acquisition of symbolic representations of numbers. Some hypotheses concerning the role of spatial-numerical associations in numerical development are proposed. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01