Number sense in infancy predicts mathematical abilities in childhood

Abstract

Human infants in the first year of life possess an intuitive sense of number. This preverbal number sense may serve as a developmental building block for the uniquely human capacity for mathematics. In support of this idea, several studies have demonstrated that nonverbal number sense is correlated with mathematical abilities in children and adults. However, there has been no direct evidence that infant numerical abilities are related to mathematical abilities later in childhood. Here, we provide evidence that preverbal number sense in infancy predicts mathematical abilities in preschool-aged children. Numerical preference scores at 6 months of age correlated with both standardized math test scores and nonsymbolic number comparison scores at 3.5 years of age, suggesting that preverbal number sense facilitates the acquisition of numerical symbols and mathematical abilities. This relationship held even after controlling for general intelligence, indicating that preverbal number sense imparts a unique contribution to mathematical ability. These results validate the many prior studies purporting to show number sense in infancy and support the hypothesis that mathematics is built upon an intuitive sense of number that predates language.analog magnitudes | approximate number system | cognitive development | mathematical cognition W here does the uniquely human capacity for abstract mathematical concepts come from? What are the ontological building blocks that scaffold our ability for representing number symbolically and performing exact arithmetic? One hypothesis is that the preverbal, nonsymbolic numerical capacities exhibited by human infants in the first year of life serve as a conceptual basis for learning to count and acquiring symbolic mathematical knowledge (1, 2). Although many cognitive abilities contribute to math achievement, including working memory, inhibition, and other executive functions (3, 4), symbolic mathematics is commonly thought to build on a domain-specific nonverbal numerical representation (5). This system, the approximate number system (ANS), is an evolutionarily and ontogenetically ancient system that allows approximate representation of number without the need to count or rely on numerical symbols (2, 6).Support for this hypothesis comes from a handful of studies that have shown a correlation between math ability and individual differences in ANS acuity. For example, ANS acuity in adolescence retroactively predicts math ability in elementary school (7) and ANS acuity in preschool-aged children correlates with their current and future math performance (8-12). In addition, children with dyscalculia, a severe deficit specific to math, have poorer ANS acuity than their typically developing peers (9, 11). These findings demonstrate that ANS acuity covaries with math ability, but the direction of this relationship remains unclear. One possibility is that ANS acuity guides the acquisition of the verbal counting system and symbolic math knowledge, such that children with greater ANS acuity learn t...

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The Conceptual and Empirical Case for Social Evaluation in Infancy

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