Magnitude Representations (magnitude + representation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Space and Time in the Child's Mind: Evidence for a Cross-Dimensional Asymmetry

COGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 3 2010
Daniel Casasanto
Abstract What is the relationship between space and time in the human mind? Studies in adults show an asymmetric relationship between mental representations of these basic dimensions of experience: Representations of time depend on space more than representations of space depend on time. Here we investigated the relationship between space and time in the developing mind. Native Greek-speaking children watched movies of two animals traveling along parallel paths for different distances or durations and judged the spatial and temporal aspects of these events (e.g., Which animal went for a longer distance, or a longer time?). Results showed a reliable cross-dimensional asymmetry. For the same stimuli, spatial information influenced temporal judgments more than temporal information influenced spatial judgments. This pattern was robust to variations in the age of the participants and the type of linguistic framing used to elicit responses. This finding demonstrates a continuity between space-time representations in children and adults, and informs theories of analog magnitude representation. [source]


What the eyes already ,know': using eye movement measurement to tap into children's implicit numerical magnitude representations

INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2010
Angela Heine
Abstract To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's implicit and explicit knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to investigate the development of basic knowledge about numerical magnitude in primary school children. Sixty-six children from grades one to three (i.e. 6,9 years) were presented with two parallel versions of a number line estimation task of which one was restricted to behavioural measures, whereas the other included the recording of eye movement data. The results of the eye movement experiment indicate a quantitative increase as well as a qualitative change in children's implicit knowledge about numerical magnitudes in this age group that precedes the overt, that is, behavioural, demonstration of explicit numerical knowledge. The finding that children's eye movements reveal substantially more about the presence of implicit precursors of later explicit knowledge in the numerical domain than classical approaches suggests further exploration of eye movement measurement as a potential early assessment tool of individual achievement levels in numerical processing. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Cognitive Foundations of Arithmetic: Evolution and Ontogenisis

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 1 2001
Susan Carey
Dehaene (this volume) articulates a naturalistic approach to the cognitive foundations of mathematics. Further, he argues that the ,number line' (analog magnitude) system of representation is the evolutionary and ontogenetic foundation of numerical concepts. Here I endorse Dehaene's naturalistic stance and also his characterization of analog magnitude number representations. Although analog magnitude representations are part of the evolutionary foundations of numerical concepts, I argue that they are unlikely to be part of the ontogenetic foundations of the capacity to represent natural number. Rather, the developmental source of explicit integer list representations of number are more likely to be systems such as the object,file representations that articulate mid,level object based attention, systems that build parallel representations of small sets of individuals. [source]


Numerical Magnitude Representations Influence Arithmetic Learning

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2008
Julie L. Booth
This study examined whether the quality of first graders' (mean age = 7.2 years) numerical magnitude representations is correlated with, predictive of, and causally related to their arithmetic learning. The children's pretest numerical magnitude representations were found to be correlated with their pretest arithmetic knowledge and to be predictive of their learning of answers to unfamiliar arithmetic problems. The relation to learning of unfamiliar problems remained after controlling for prior arithmetic knowledge, short-term memory for numbers, and math achievement test scores. Moreover, presenting randomly chosen children with accurate visual representations of the magnitudes of addends and sums improved their learning of the answers to the problems. Thus, representations of numerical magnitude are both correlationally and causally related to arithmetic learning. [source]