Author Description

"Mathematical thinking begins long before children enter school. Preschoolers can perform many quantitative tasks - simple calculation problems, ordering and comparing sets, and reasoning about fractions - before they acquire conventional skills. How does this ability develop? Some have claimed that it is part of our innate endowment. Indeed, recent experiments have demonstrated quantitative awareness in infants - sometimes as early as the first days of life. Does this mean that humans are born with a number sense?" "Quantitative Development in Infancy and Early Childhood takes a critical look at the evidence concerning nonverbal quantification in infants and young children. For the first time since the explosion of research on this topic began in the 1980s, the entire literature covering research from birth to school age is considered together. Instead of finding support for the claim that number concepts are inborn, Mix, Huttenlocher, and Levine conclude that quantification originates with an approximate sense of overall amount."--Jacket.