A Study of 60- to 89-MO.-Old Children's Skill at Writing Numerals

Abstract

The skill of writing numerals necessitates a certain developmental maturity. Studying the age at which children start to develop this skill and assessing problems they encounter while writing numerals should give direction to their training. From 8 schools a total of 267 children, ages 60 to 89 mo., were asked to write the numerals 1 to 9. Analysis showed that 80% of the children wrote most of the numerals correctly, 15% wrote inverted numerals, 2.0% wrote some numerals as letters, and 4% did not write certain numerals at all. In addition, 64% of children ages 60 to 65 mo. gave correct responses, and the perception of correct responses increased across age groups until 95% were correct in the group who were 84 to 89 mo. There was no significant difference between girls and boys in these writing skills.

Path to Numbers Writing: A Longitudinal Study with Children from 3.5 to 5.5 Years Old

“…At present we know that preschool children have many ideas about the number system (Brizuela, 2001), and that writing numbers is a skill that increases directly with age (Arnas, Sigirtmac, & Gul, 2004), and is linked to verbal and conceptual arithmetic (Agli & Martini, 1995;Molfese, Beswick, Molnar, & Jacobi-Vessels, 2006). Moreover, we know that preschoolers favor iconic and idiosyncratic representations, while older children are more likely to produce pictographic and symbolic forms (Hughes, 1986).…”

“…Arnas, Sigirtmac and Gul (2004) designed a study to investigate the ability of young (60-to 89-months-old) children to write numerals, identifying which they write incorrectly and what sort of mistakes they make in the process. They found that most children wrote numerals correctly and that their skills in writing numerals correctly increased in direct proportion to age.…”

“…In other words, the various forms of quantitative notation do not appear to follow a rigid developmental sequence. These authors concluded that the different written notations are strategies that children discover and use according to the different problems or quantitative representations they have to solve.In a more recent study of five-year-olds, Brizuela (2001) found that even before any formal schooling, children have many important ideas about the number words (e.g., ideas about the number of digits numbers and about how new numbers can be generated from a set of ten digits and the role of zero).Arnas, Sigirtmac and Gul (2004) designed a study to investigate the ability of young (60-to 89-months-old) children to write numerals, identifying which they write incorrectly and what sort of mistakes they make in the process. They found that most children wrote numerals correctly and that their skills in writing numerals correctly increased in direct proportion to age.…”