Symbolic representation of the number three: a study with three-year-old children from contrasting socioeconomic environments

CAVALCANTE, SILVIA; SCHEUER, NORA; BRIZUELA, BÁRBARA; MARTÍ, EDUARDO ; TRENCH, MÁXIMO

JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2016 vol. 28 p. 743 - 755

2044-5911

The goal of the present study was tocompare a range of aspects in children?s symbolic knowledge about the numberthree among two groups of three-year-olds from contrasting socioeconomicbackgrounds. Every child was presented with five tasks that focused on thenumber three and that had cognitive demands of different complexity: expressingtheir age, reciting the conventional number series up to three, quantifying a collectionof three, and two tasks requiring the use of visually presented quantitative information.The results showed the same order of difficulty of the tasks in both socioeconomicgroups and a clear performance difference depending on socioeconomicbackground. These findings show that symbolic knowledge about the number threedoes not come in an all or none fashion. Rather, different aspects ofthis symbolic competence become apparent in response to different tasks, andseem to depend largely on the socioeconomic environment in which childrendevelop.