Previous research has demonstrated a link between children's ability to name canonical finger configurations and their mathematical abilities. This study aimed to investigate the nature of this association, specifically exploring whether the relationship is skill and handshape specific and identifying the underlying mechanisms involved.…

State Early Learning Standards (ELS) are multi-function tools that inform early childhood instruction and practices. Using an established framework of early numerical development, this study assessed the prevalence of number, number relations, and number operations indicators in ELS, specifically indicators of counting, numeral knowledge,…

Taking into consideration that young children engage with mathematics outside of the preschool classroom, this study focuses on adults' awareness of numerical ideas raised by young children without and with adult involvement. Ninety adults in Israel, the majority of whom were parents or grandparents of children aged 3-6 years, participated in this…

Rational numbers, such as fractions and decimals, are harder to understand than natural numbers. Moreover, individuals struggle with fractions more than with decimals. The present study sought to disentangle the extent to which two potential sources of difficulty affect secondary-school students' numerical magnitude understanding: number type…

Competence with rational numbers is essential for mathematics proficiency in secondary mathematics. However, many students struggle with rational number concepts, and students with mathematics difficulties struggle even more. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an intervention that incorporated the use of explicit instruction…

The definitions serve the purpose of communication and preservation of knowledge in scientific inquiry. However, it is quite often to perceive number sense concept without well-accepted definitions in the field of mathematics education research. Despite the mentioned issue, the current literature on children's number sense provides a glean for…

This study investigates how the approximate number system (ANS) and young children's symbolic skills jointly develop and interact. Specifically, the study aims at disentangling the directionality of the association between ANS acuity and a wide range of symbolic skills that reflect 4- to 5-year-olds' symbolic quantitative knowledge (enumeration…

Computational estimation is seen as an important mathematical competence. Little is known, however, about the mathematical skills that are predictive of early computational estimation development. The current study longitudinally followed a group of about 350 children at four time points: second (K2, 4-year-olds) and third grades of kindergarten…

This study examined the effects of training involving spatial versus nonspatial representations of numerical magnitude for promoting arithmetic fluency. The key goal was to advance theoretical understanding of the relation between spatial and math learning, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the development of future educational…

Children with low performance in early numeracy are at risk of facing learning difficulties in mathematics, but few trials have examined how this can be ameliorated. A total of 120 first-grade children (M[subscript age] = 6.4 years) were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control condition. The 14-week intervention targeted early numeracy…

In this article, we present research on eight kindergarten and eight first-grade students' understandings of the arithmetic properties of commutativity, additive identity, and additive inverse during a classroom teaching experiment, selected from a larger study that included 88 students. In this study, we explore the students' types of…

What is the nature of the relationship between different lower-level numerical skills and their role in developing arithmetic skills? We consider the hypothesis of a reciprocal relationship between the development of symbolic (e.g., Arabic numerals) and nonsymbolic (e.g., arrays of objects) numerical magnitude processing. Evidence for…

Children's knowledge of arithmetic principles is a key aspect of early mathematics knowledge. Knowledge of arithmetic principles predicts how children approach solving arithmetic problems and the likelihood of their success. Prior work has begun to address how children might learn arithmetic principles in a classroom setting. Understanding of…

A growing body of research has shown that symbolic number processing relates to individual differences in mathematics. However, it remains unclear which mechanisms of symbolic number processing are crucial--accessing underlying magnitude representation of symbols (i.e., symbol-magnitude associations), processing relative order of symbols (i.e.,…

Children's knowledge of the ordinal relations among number symbols is related to their mathematical learning. Ordinal knowledge has been measured using judgment (i.e., decide whether a sequence of three digits is in order) and ordering tasks (i.e., order three digits from smallest to largest). However, the question remains whether performance on…