How do children acquire exact meanings for number words like three or forty-seven? In recent years, a lively debate has probed the cognitive systems that support learning, with some arguing that an evolutionarily ancient "approximate number system" drives early number word meanings, and others arguing that learning is supported chiefly…

Although most U. S. children can accurately count sets by 4 years of age, many fail to understand the structural analogy between counting and number -- that adding 1 to a set corresponds to counting up 1 word in the count list. While children are theorized to establish this Structure Mapping coincident with learning how counting is used to…

Perceptual representations of objects and approximate magnitudes are often invoked as building blocks that children combine to acquire the positive integers. Systems of numerical perception are either assumed to contain the logical foundations of arithmetic innately, or to supply the basis for their induction. I propose an alternative to this…

How do children map number words to the numerical magnitudes they represent? Recent work in adults has shown that two distinct mechanisms--structure mapping and associative mapping--connect number words to nonlinguistic numerical representations (Sullivan, J., 2012). This study investigated the development of number word mappings, and the roles of…

Before children learn the specific meanings of numerals like six, do they know that they represent precise quantities? Previous studies have reported conflicting evidence and have found that children expect numerals to label precise quantities in some tasks but not in others (Condry & Spelke, 2008; Sarnecka & Gelman, 2004). In this…

When asked to "find three forks", adult speakers of English use the noun "fork" to identify units for counting. However, when number words (e.g. "three") and quantifiers (e.g. "more", "every") are used with unfamiliar words ("Give me three blickets") noun-specific conceptual criteria are unavailable for picking out units. This poses a problem for…

We tested the hypothesis that, when children learn to correctly count sets, they make a semantic induction about the meanings of their number words. We tested the logical understanding of number words in 84 children that were classified as "cardinal-principle knowers" by the criteria set forth by Wynn (1992). Results show that these children often…

How do children as young as 2 years of age know that numerals, like "one," have exact interpretations, while quantifiers and words like "a" do not? Previous studies have argued that only numerals have exact lexical meanings. Children could not use scalar implicature to strengthen numeral meanings, it is argued, since they fail to do so for…

When faced with a sentence like, "Some of the toys are on the table", adults, but not preschoolers, compute a scalar implicature, taking the sentence to imply that not all the toys are on the table. This paper explores the hypothesis that children fail to compute scalar implicatures because they lack knowledge of relevant scalar alternatives to…

A study of 104 Japanese-speaking 2- to 5-year-olds tested the relation between numeral and quantifier acquisition. A first study assessed Japanese children's comprehension of quantifiers, numerals, and classifiers. Relative to English-speaking counterparts, Japanese children were delayed in numeral comprehension at 2 years of age but showed no…

Three experiments explored the semantics of the mass-count distinction in young children and adults. In Experiments 1 and 2, the quantity judgments of participants provided evidence that some mass nouns refer to individuals, as such. Participants judged one large portion of stuff to be ''more'' than three tiny portions for substance-mass nouns…