Young Children's Judgments Aboutthe Relative Size of Shared Portions:The Role of Material Type

Abstract

3 experiments were conducted to assess young (5-7 years) children's ability to judge the relative amount that a character would receive if sharing a material with 1 friend (halves) or 2 friends (thirds). Materials included items that appeared in 3 forms: continuous, discrete, and composite. In the first 2 experiments, performance was best with materials in composite form and worst with materials in continuous form. In a third experiment, children performed as well with large unorganized sets as with small organized sets, suggesting that they were not using a counting strategy. The results support suggestions that children enter school with informal knowledge about partitioning that may serve as a foundation for instruction in fractions concepts.