Abstract
Do children spontaneously represent spatial-numeric features of a task, even when it does not include printed numbers (Mix et al., 2016)? Sixty first grade students completed a novel spatial estimation task by seeking and finding pages in a 100-page book without printed page numbers. Children were shown pages 1 through 6 and 100, and then were asked, “Can you find page X?” Children’s precision of estimates on the page finder task and a 0-100 number line estimation task was calculated with the Percent Absolute Error (PAE) formula (Siegler and Booth, 2004), in which lower PAE indicated more precise estimates. Children’s numerical knowledge was further assessed with: (1) numeral identification (e.g., What number is this: 57?), (2) magnitude comparison (e.g., Which is larger: 54 or 57?), and (3) counting on (e.g., Start counting from 84 and count up 5 more). Children’s accuracy on these tasks was correlated with their number line PAE. Children’s number line estimation PAE predicted their page finder PAE, even after controlling for age and accuracy on the other numerical tasks. Children’s estimates on the page finder and number line tasks appear to tap a general magnitude representation. However, the page finder task did not correlate with numeral identification and counting-on performance, likely because these tasks do not measure children’s magnitude knowledge. Our results suggest that the novel page finder task is a useful measure of children’s magnitude knowledge, and that books have similar spatial-numeric affordances as number lines and numeric board games.
Highlights
Do children spontaneously represent spatial-numeric features of a task, even when it does not include printed numbers (Mix et al, 2016)? Previous research has provided evidence of spatialnumeric associations early in development suggesting that space and number share a common representational format (McCrink and Opfer, 2014; Patro et al, 2014)
Overarching goal of the present experiment was to compare children’s performance on tasks known to tap numerical knowledge to a novel measure, the page finder task, which asked children to estimate the location of a page within a book without labeled page numbers and is hypothesized to measure magnitude estimation
All three dependent variables that characterized performance in the number line estimation task (i.e., Percent Absolute Error (PAE), R2Lin, and slope) were related to the same dependent variables in the novel, page finder magnitude estimation task in which children were asked to find the location of a page number in a book
Summary
Do children spontaneously represent spatial-numeric features of a task, even when it does not include printed numbers (Mix et al, 2016)? Previous research has provided evidence of spatialnumeric associations early in development suggesting that space and number share a common representational format (McCrink and Opfer, 2014; Patro et al, 2014). Do children spontaneously represent spatial-numeric features of a task, even when it does not include printed numbers (Mix et al, 2016)? We investigated the possibility that books have spatial-numeric affordances like number lines and board games. Overarching goal of the present experiment was to compare children’s performance on tasks known to tap numerical knowledge to a novel measure, the page finder task, which asked children to estimate the location of a page within a book without labeled page numbers and is hypothesized to measure magnitude estimation. If book affordances are related to the affordances of other measures, such as number lines, the results of the page finder task should be highly related to other measures that tap children’s numerical magnitude understanding
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