Young children interpret number gestures differently than nonsymbolic sets

Researchers have long been interested in the origins of humans’ understanding of symbolic number, focusing primarily on how children learn the meanings of number words (e.g., “one”, “two”, etc.). However, recent evidence indicates that children learn the meanings of number gestures before learning number words. In the present set of experiments, we ask whether children's early knowledge of number gestures resembles their knowledge of nonsymbolic number. In four experiments, we show that preschool children (n = 139 in total; age M = 4.14 years, SD = 0.71, range = 2.75–6.20) do not view number gestures in the same the way that they view nonsymbolic representations of quantity (i.e., arrays of shapes), which opens the door for the possibility that young children view number gestures as symbolic, as adults and older children do. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/WtVziFN1yuI

Highlights

• Children were more accurate when enumerating briefly-presented number gestures than arrays of shapes, with a shallower decline in accuracy as quantities increased.
• We replicated this finding with arrays of shapes that were organized into neat, dice-like configurations (compared to the random configurations used in Experiment 1).
• The advantage in enumerating briefly-presented number gestures was evident before children had learned the cardinal principle.
• When gestures were digitally altered to pit handshape configuration against number of fingers extended, children overwhelmingly based their responses on handshape configuration.