The Child's Understanding of Number

by Rochel Gelman, C. R. Gallistel

Overview

The authors report the results of some half dozen years of research into when and how children acquire numerical skills. They provide a new set of answers to these questions, and overturn much of the traditional wisdom on the subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674116375
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1986
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.65(d)

Table of Contents

1. Focus on the Preschooler

2. Training Studies Reconsidered

3. More Capacity Than Meets the Eye: Direct Evidence

4. Number Concepts in the Preschooler?

5. What Numerosities Can the Young Child Represent?

6. How Do Young Children Obtain Their Representations of Numerosity?

7. The Counting Model

8. The Development of the How-To-Count Principles

9. The Abstraction and Order-Irrelevance Counting Principles

10. Reasoning about Number

11. Formal Arithmetic and the Young Child's Understanding of Number

12. What Develops and How

Conclusions

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

Here at last is the book we have been waiting for, or at any rate known we needed, on the young child and number. The authors are at once sophisticated in their own understanding of number and rich in psychological intuition. They present a wealth of good experiments to support and guide their intuitions. And all is told in so simple and unalarming a manner that even the most pusillanimous will be able to read with enjoyment.

Canadian Journal of Psychology

The publication of this book may mark a sea change in the way that we think about cognitive development. For the past two decades, the emphasis has been on young children’s limitations… Now a new trend is emerging: to challenge the original assumption of young children’s cognitive incapacity. The Child’s Understanding of Number represents the most original and provocative manifestation to date of this new trend.

Contemporary Psychology

Here at last is the book we have been waiting for, or at any rate known we needed, on the young child and number. The authors are at once sophisticated in their own understanding of number and rich in psychological intuition. They present a wealth of good experiments to support and guide their intuitions. And all is told in so simple and unalarming a manner that even the most pusillanimous will be able to read with enjoyment.-- "Canadian Journal of Psychology"

The publication of this book may mark a sea change in the way that we think about cognitive development. For the past two decades, the emphasis has been on young children's limitations... Now a new trend is emerging: to challenge the original assumption of young children's cognitive incapacity. The Child's Understanding of Number represents the most original and provocative manifestation to date of this new trend.-- "Contemporary Psychology"

From the Publisher