UC Irvine

This study explored the conceptual basis for the cardinal principle of counting. The Give-N task was used to separate 73 2- to 4-year-olds into children who could give the right number of items for only a subset of the numerals in their count list (“subset-knowers”) and children who could give the right number for all numerals tested ("high-numeral knowers"). Performance on two novel tasks supported the hypothesis that only the high-numeral-knowers understand how counting implements the successor function. Other tasks established that subset-knowers have good procedural competence with counting, and that a high percentage of subset-knowers know that the last word reached in a count is the appropriate answer to a “how many?” question. The results add to a body of literature detailing the many steps involved in working out how counting represents natural number.