Differential Development of Children's Understanding of the Cardinality of Small Numbers and Zero.

Counting and the understanding of cardinality are important steps in children's numerical development. Recent studies have indicated that language and visuospatial abilities play an important role in the development of children's cardinal knowledge of small numbers. However, predictors for the knowledge about were usually not considered in these studies. Therefore, the present study investigated whether the acquisition of cardinality knowledge on small numbers and the concept of share cross-domain and domain-specific numerical predictors. Particular interest was paid to the question whether visuospatial abilities - in addition to language abilities - were associated with children's understanding of small numbers and . Accordingly, we assessed kindergarteners aged 4 to 5 years in terms of their understanding of small numbers and as well as their visuospatial, general language, counting, Arabic number identification abilities, and their finger number knowledge. We observed significant zero-order correlations of vocabulary, number identification, finger knowledge, and counting abilities with children's knowledge about as well as understanding of the cardinality of small numbers. Subsequent regression analyses substantiated the influences of counting abilities on knowledge about and the influences of both counting abilities and finger knowledge on children's understanding of the cardinality of small numbers. No significant influences of cross-domain predictors were observed. In sum, these results indicate that domain-specific numerical precursor skills seem to be more important for children's development of an understanding of the cardinality of small numbers as well as of the concept of than the more proximal cross-domain abilities such as language and visuospatial abilities.