Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between finger counting and numerical processing in 4–7-year-old children. Children were assessed on a variety of numerical tasks and we examined the correlations between their rates of success and their frequency of finger use in a counting task. We showed that children's performance on finger pattern comparison and identification tasks did not correlate with the frequency of finger use. However, this last variable correlated with the percentages of correct responses in an enumeration task (i.e., Give-N task), even when the age of children was entered as a covariate in the analysis. Despite this correlation, we showed that some children who never used their fingers in the counting task were able to perform optimally in the enumeration task. Overall, our results support the conclusion that finger counting is useful but not necessary to develop accurate symbolic numerical skills. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of fingers in a counting task is related to the ability of children in a dynamic enumeration task but not to static tasks involving recognition or comparison of finger patterns. Therefore, it could be that the link between fingers and numbers remain circumscribed to counting tasks and do not extent to static finger montring situations.
Highlights
Numerical symbols appear in a large variety of contexts such as price tags, shopping bills, phone numbers, street addresses, or arithmetic and mathematical problems
GENERAL DISCUSSION The aim of this study was to clarify the nature of the relationship between finger use and numerical processing
If finger use constitutes a necessary transient developmental stage between non-symbolic and symbolic numerical abilities, children who do not use their fingers for counting should not be able to succeed in numerical tasks
Summary
Numerical symbols appear in a large variety of contexts such as price tags, shopping bills, phone numbers, street addresses, or arithmetic and mathematical problems. It is important for researchers and practitioners to understand how numerical capacities develop and potentially dysfunction in children. An early numerical ability that has received increasing attention from researchers in recent years is finger counting. Finger counting constitutes an external aid to represent numbers, helps keeping track of number words in counting and sustains the comprehension of the 10-base numerical system as well as the realization of basic arithmetic operations. Due to the amount of activities based on finger counting, it is logically considered to play an important role in numerical capacities
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