Zusammenfassung. Die Interaktion zwischen pädagogischer Fachkraft und Kind ist eine zentrale Qualitätsdimension in der frühen Bildung. Ein Interaktionsformat wurde als besonders wirksam für weitere Bildungsverläufe identifiziert: sustained shared thinking (SST). SST ist eine Form kognitiver Kooperation. Es setzt aktive Partizipation der Interagierenden voraus und zielt auf gemeinsame gedankliche Problemlösungen, Begriffsklärungen und Bewertungen von Ereignissen. Ziel der Untersuchung ist es, mit Hilfe eines standardisierten experimentellen Settings Aufschluss über die Einflüsse von zentralen SST-Sprechhandlungen auf quantitativ-sprachliche und sprachlich-kognitive abhängige Variablen bei Kindern zu gewinnen. Dazu wurde das Dialogverhalten von Kindern im Alter von 2 bis 6 Jahren (N = 38) mit ihren Bezugserzieherinnen bei der Betrachtung von Bildkarten in 1:1-Situationen untersucht. Die Ergebnisse sprechen dafür, dass die Anwendung von SST-Sprechhandlungen einen positiven Einfluss auf das Sprachverhalten von Kindern hat und dass diese Effekte unabhängig vom sozioökonomischen Status und kognitiver Leistung (hier Arbeitsgedächtnis als Proxy für fluide kognitive Fähigkeiten) der Kinder auftreten.

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Numerical magnitude information is assumed to be spatially represented in the form of a mental number line defined with respect to a body-centred, egocentric frame of reference. In this context, spatial language skills such as mastery of verbal descriptions of spatial position (e.g., in front of, behind, to the right/left) have been proposed to be relevant for grasping spatial relations between numerical magnitudes on the mental number line. We examined 4- to 5-year-old’s spatial language skills in tasks that allow responses in egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, as well as their relative understanding of numerical magnitude (assessed by a number word comparison task). In addition, we evaluated influences of children’s absolute understanding of numerical magnitude assessed by their number word comprehension (montring different numbers using their fingers) and of their knowledge on numerical sequences (determining predecessors and successors as well as identifying missing dice patterns of a series). Results indicated that when considering responses that corresponded to the egocentric perspective, children’s spatial language was associated significantly with their relative numerical magnitude understanding, even after controlling for covariates, such as children’s SES, mental rotation skills, and also absolute magnitude understanding or knowledge on numerical sequences. This suggests that the use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language may facilitate spatial representation of numbers along a mental number line and thus seem important for preschoolers’ relative understanding of numerical magnitude.

It counts as empirically proven that infants can individuate objects. Object individuation is assumed to be fundamental in the development of infants' ontology within the objectfirst account. It crucially relies on an object-file (OF) system, representing both spatiotemporal ("where") and categorical ("what") information about objects as solid, cohesive bodies moving continuously in space and time. However, infants' performance in tasks requiring them to use featural information to detect individuation violations appears to be at odds with the object-first account. In such cases, infants do not appear to be able to develop correct expectations about the numerosity of objects. Recently, proponents of the objectfirst account proposed that these individuation failures result from integration errors between the OF system and an additional physical reasoning system. We are going to argue that the predictions of a feature-based physical-reasoning (PR) system are sufficient for explaining infants' behavior. The striking predictive power of the PR system calls into question the relevance of the OF system and, thereby, challenges the assumption that infants can individuate objects early on.

Perner and Roessler (in: Aguilar J, Buckareff A (eds) Causing human action: new perspectives on the causal theory of action, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 199–228, 2010) hold that children who do not yet have an understanding of subjective perspectives, i.e., mental states, explain actions by appealing to objective facts. In this paper, we criticize this view. We argue that in order to understand objective facts, subjects need to understand perspectives. By analysing basic fact-expressing assertions, we show that subjects cannot refer to facts if they do not understand two types of perspectivity, namely, spatial and doxastic perspectivity. To avoid conceptual confusion regarding different ways of referring to facts, we distinguish between reference to facts de re and de dicto.