Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In early mathematics development the development of symbolic skills is critical to math learning. Our mathematicalsystem is based on Arabic number symbols which do not provide any semantic meaning relevant to the number words andsymbols. In order to succeed in math one must be able to recognize and understand the meaning of numeric and other math-ematical symbols. Little is known about the development of these symbolic skills. The current study examines 4 -7-year-oldchildren’s understanding and recognition of number and arithmetic symbols. The youngest children made significant errors inidentifying numbers as well as confusing letter symbols with number symbols. Results reveal a developmental progression ofnumeric symbol recognition.