Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2025 Jan;249:106073. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106073. Epub 2024 Sep 17.
It has been established that young children who use their fingers to solve arithmetic problems outperform those who do not. However, it remains unclear whether finger counting itself enhances arithmetic performance or if children with already advanced numerical abilities are more inclined to use this strategy. In the current study, to shed light on this matter, we observed the behavior of 189 4- and 5-year-old children in an addition task and a task assessing their knowledge of the three "how-to-count" principles (i.e., stable order, one-to-one correspondence, and cardinality principles). Of these children, 169 were reassessed 1 year later (the second testing point). At the first testing point, our results revealed that finger users better know the counting principles than non-finger users. Nevertheless, some children use their fingers without knowing the principles, but in this case they present low performance in the addition task. Moreover, we found that knowing the counting principles does not naturally prompt finger use. Finally, we did not find evidence supporting the idea that finger use has a specific role in the development of counting principles, which questions the idea that finger counting has a functional role in the construction of the number concept. All in all, our results tend to show that children need to know the counting principles to be efficient finger users. Therefore, finger counting seems to be a useful tool when used by children who already possess advanced numerical knowledge.
已经确定，使用手指解决算术问题的幼儿比不使用手指的幼儿表现更好。然而，目前尚不清楚手指计数本身是否能提高算术表现，或者是否具有先进数值能力的儿童更倾向于使用这种策略。在当前的研究中，为了阐明这个问题，我们观察了 189 名 4 岁和 5 岁儿童在加法任务和评估他们对三个“如何计数”原则（即稳定顺序、一一对应和基数原则）的知识的任务中的行为。其中，169 名儿童在 1 年后（第二个测试点）进行了重新评估。在第一个测试点，我们的结果表明，手指使用者比非手指使用者更了解计数原则。然而，有些儿童在不知道计数原则的情况下使用手指，但在这种情况下，他们在加法任务中的表现不佳。此外，我们发现了解计数原则并不会自然而然地促使手指使用。最后，我们没有发现证据支持手指使用在计数原则发展中具有特定作用的观点，这质疑了手指计数在构建数字概念中具有功能作用的观点。总之，我们的结果倾向于表明，儿童需要了解计数原则才能成为高效的手指使用者。因此，对于已经具备先进数值知识的儿童来说，手指计数似乎是一种有用的工具。
