Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada.
Department of Cognitive Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Aug;208:105144. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105144. Epub 2021 Apr 13.
Children's performance on number line tasks reflects their developing number system knowledge. Before 5 years of age, most children perform poorly on even the simplest number lines (i.e., 0-10). Our goal was to understand how number line skills develop before formal schooling. Chilean preschoolers attempted a 0-10 number line task three times over 2 years: at the beginning of pre-kindergarten (M = 4:7 [years;months]; Time 1), at the end of pre-kindergarten (M = 5:0; Time 2), and at the end of kindergarten (M = 5:10; Time 3). We used latent class analysis to group children according to their patterns of performance across number targets. At Time 1, 86% of children had error patterns indicating that they randomly placed estimates on the line. At Time 2, 56% of children continued to respond randomly. At Time 3, 56% of children showed competent performance across the number line, 23% were accurate only near the endpoints, and 21% were accurate only for low target numbers near the origin. Latent transition analyses showed that the transition from less to more proficient estimation classes was predicted by children's number identification skills. Thus, number line performance changed dramatically from 4 to 6 years of age as children began to develop the cognitive and numerical skills necessary to accurately estimate numbers on a number line.
儿童在数线任务上的表现反映了他们正在发展的数系知识。在 5 岁之前，大多数儿童甚至在最简单的数线上表现都很差（例如，0-10）。我们的目标是了解在正式入学之前数线技能是如何发展的。智利学前儿童在 2 年内尝试了 3 次 0-10 的数线任务：在学前班开始时（M=4:7[年;月]；时间 1）、学前班结束时（M=5:0；时间 2）和幼儿园结束时（M=5:10；时间 3）。我们使用潜在类别分析根据儿童在各个数字目标上的表现模式将他们分组。在时间 1，86%的儿童的表现模式表明他们随机在线上放置估计值。在时间 2，56%的儿童继续随机反应。在时间 3，56%的儿童在线上表现出了熟练的能力，23%的儿童仅在端点附近准确，21%的儿童仅在原点附近的低目标数字准确。潜在转移分析表明，从不太熟练的估计类别向更熟练的估计类别转移是由儿童的数字识别技能预测的。因此，儿童从 4 岁到 6 岁，数线表现发生了巨大变化，因为他们开始发展出在数线上准确估计数字所需的认知和数值技能。
