Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
Cognition. 2010 Jun;115(3):394-406. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.02.002. Epub 2010 Mar 27.
Children take years to learn symbolic arithmetic. Nevertheless, non-human animals, human adults with no formal education, and human infants represent approximate number in arrays of objects and sequences of events, and they use these capacities to perform approximate addition and subtraction. Do children harness these abilities when they begin to learn school mathematics? In two experiments in different schools, kindergarten children from diverse backgrounds were tested on their non-symbolic arithmetic abilities during the school year, as well as on their mastery of number words and symbols. Performance of non-symbolic arithmetic predicted children's mathematics achievement at the end of the school year, independent of achievement in reading or general intelligence. Non-symbolic arithmetic performance was also related to children's mastery of number words and symbols, which figured prominently in the assessments of mathematics achievement in both schools. Thus, non-symbolic and symbolic numerical abilities are specifically related, in children of diverse socio-economic backgrounds, near the start of mathematics instruction.
儿童需要数年时间才能学习符号算术。然而，非人类动物、没有接受过正规教育的成年人类和人类婴儿在物体数组和事件序列中表示近似数字，并且他们使用这些能力进行近似加法和减法。当孩子们开始学习学校数学时，他们会利用这些能力吗？在两所不同学校进行的两项实验中，来自不同背景的幼儿园儿童在学年期间接受了非符号算术能力的测试，以及对数字单词和符号的掌握程度的测试。非符号算术能力的表现预测了儿童在学年结束时的数学成绩，与阅读或一般智力的成绩无关。非符号算术能力的表现也与儿童对数字单词和符号的掌握程度有关，这些在两所学校的数学成绩评估中都占有重要地位。因此，在社会经济背景各异的儿童中，非符号和符号数字能力在接近数学教学开始时就有了具体的关联。
