Number-concept acquisition and general vocabulary development.
How is number-concept acquisition related to overall language development? Experiments 1 and 2 measured number-word knowledge and general vocabulary in a total of 59 children, ages 30-60 months. A strong correlation was found between number-word knowledge and vocabulary, independent of the child's age, contrary to previous results (D. Ansari et al., 2003). This result calls into question arguments that (a) the number-concept creation process is scaffolded mainly by visuo-spatial development and (b) that language only becomes integrated after the concepts are created (D. Ansari et al., 2003). Instead, this may suggest that having a larger nominal vocabulary helps children learn number words. Experiment 3 shows that the differences with previous results are likely due to changes in how the data were analyzed.
Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92617-5100, USA. jnegen@uci.edu
James
J
Negen
Barbara W
BW
Sarnecka
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D055641:Mathematical Concepts; D014825:Vocabulary