1 Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri.
2 Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine.
Psychol Sci. 2018 Feb;29(2):191-205. doi: 10.1177/0956797617729817. Epub 2017 Nov 29.
We demonstrate a link between preschoolers' quantitative competencies and their school-entry knowledge of the relations among numbers (number-system knowledge). The quantitative competencies of 141 children (69 boys) were assessed at the beginning of preschool and throughout the next 2 years of preschool, as was their mathematics and reading achievement at the end of kindergarten and their number-system knowledge at the beginning of first grade. A combination of Bayes analyses and standard regressions revealed that the age at which the children had the conceptual insight that number words represent specific quantities (cardinal value) was strongly related to their later number-system knowledge and was more consistently related to broader mathematics than to reading achievement, controlling for intelligence, executive function, and parental education levels. The key implication is that it is not simply knowledge of cardinal value but the age of acquisition of this principle that is central to later mathematical development and school readiness.
我们证明了学龄前儿童的定量能力与其入学时对数字关系（数制知识）的了解之间存在联系。在幼儿园开始和接下来的 2 年里，我们评估了 141 名儿童（69 名男孩）的定量能力，以及他们在幼儿园结束时的数学和阅读成绩，以及他们在一年级开始时的数制知识。贝叶斯分析和标准回归的结合表明，儿童何时具有数字单词代表特定数量（基数）的概念洞察力与他们后来的数制知识密切相关，并且与更广泛的数学知识比阅读成绩更一致，这是在控制智力、执行功能和父母教育水平的情况下得出的。关键的启示是，对基数的了解本身并不是关键，而是获得这一原则的年龄才是对后期数学发展和入学准备至关重要的。
