Differences in Counting Skills Between Chinese and German Children Are Accompanied by Differences in Processing of Approximate Numerical Magnitude Information

Abstract

Human beings are supposed to possess an approximate number system (ANS) dedicated to extracting and representing approximate numerical magnitude information as well as an object tracking system (OTS) for the rapid and accurate enumeration of small sets. It is assumed that the OTS and the ANS independently contribute to the acquisition of more elaborate numerical concepts. Chinese children have been shown to exhibit more elaborate numerical concepts than their non-Chinese peers, but it is still an open question whether similar cross-national differences exist with regard to the underlying systems, namely the ANS and the OTS. In the present study, we investigated this question by comparing Chinese and German preschool children with regard to their performance in a non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison task (assessing the ANS) and in an enumeration task (assessing the OTS). In addition, we compared children’s counting skills. To ensure that possible between-group differences could not be explained by differences in more general performance factors, we also assessed children’s reasoning ability and processing speed. Chinese children showed a better counting performance and a more accurate performance in the non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison task. These differences in performance could not be ascribed to differences in reasoning abilities and processing speed. In contrast, Chinese and German children did not differ significantly in the enumeration of small sets. The superior counting performance of Chinese children was thus found to be reflected in the ANS but not in the OTS.

Transparent number-naming system gives only limited advantage for preschooler's numerical development: Comparisons of Vietnamese and French-speaking children

“…For now, due to a lack of evidence, the prediction regarding some symbolic abilities (i.e., verbal number comparisons, the elaboration of number sequences, and approximate addition) remains an open question. In terms of nonsymbolic abilities, we could expect, based on previous studies [5,6], that Vietnamese children may have a slightly better ANS acuity than Belgian children. Furthermore, based on previous studies [36,38], we assumed that cross-cultural differences in home numeracy would also contribute to the differences between the two samples in the numerical tasks.…”

“…Based on these results, some authors have hypothesized that a transparent number-naming system (e.g., "ten-one" for 11), which may enhance Chinese children's learning of symbolic numbers [29], could also boost children's processing of non-symbolic numbers [5,6,30]. Accordingly, previous studies have showed that Chinese children (5-to 7-year-olds and 4-to 6-year-olds) tend to perform moderately better on a non-symbolic numerical task than British and German children, respectively [5,6]. Similarly, Dowker and Roberts [30] demonstrated that Welsh children (in grade 2) who speak a language with the same number-word structure transparency as Asian languages performed better on non-verbal line estimations than their English peers.…”

“…Symbolic number comparison has only been assessed using Arabic numbers [5], while to the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated the magnitude comparison of spoken number words. In this study, we tested whether the transparency of the Vietnamese number-naming system facilitates the acquisition of basic counting and of other more advanced symbolic numerical abilities, such as the elaboration of number sequences (i.e., counting from a number; see [4]) and the enumeration of object sets (e.g., [3,6]). We also used two tasks testing children's conceptual understanding of the number words' magnitude: the Give-N task and the number-word comparison task.…”

“…Based on the advantage of Asian languages' number systems for Asian children [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], we hypothesized that Vietnamese preschoolers would perform better on acquiring counting sequences, enumeration, and simple addition than their Belgian peers. For counting ability, we did not expect differences for numbers up to 10, but for larger numbers when number word structures differ.…”

“…Previous studies have tested children from East Asia, mostly from China [2][3][4][5][6][7] (and more rarely, Taiwan, Korea, or Japan) [8,9]. They found that Chinese children tend to outperform Western children in terms of different numerical abilities at preschool age (see [2] for a review) such as counting [3][4][5], counting large sets of objects [3,6], calculation [7], and nonsymbolic comparison [6]. However, Chinese culture and education are quite different from their Western counterparts in many ways (see [10,11] for a review).…”