Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In many languages, number words follow a recursive morphological structure. Past research suggests that children with an extended and regular count list are earlier to notice such structure than those with a more limited and less transparent count list. Building on this line of research, we propose that children's insight into the recursive structure develops in part through comparison processes that allow them to notice morphological regularities across number words. To test this, we presented 4–5-year-old children with a visual depiction of numbers 0–49, along with comparison techniques designed to facilitate the alignment across decades. We used a pretest–training–posttest design. In pre- and post-tests, we assessed children's ability to produce the successor of numbers beyond their counting range and their understanding of numerical infinity. In the post-test, we also assessed their ability to produce the successor for novel numbers. We found that the training improved children's understanding of the successor relation between numbers, though not their understanding of infinity.