Spatial numerical associations in preschoolers

ABSTRACT

Three-to-five-year-old French children were asked to add or remove objects to or from linear displays. The hypothesis of a universal tendency to represent increasing number magnitudes from left to right led to predict a majority of manipulations at the right end of the rows, whatever children's hand laterality. Conversely, if numbers are not inherently associated with space, children were expected to favour laterality-consistent manipulations. The results showed a strong tendency to operate on the right end of the rows in right-handers, but no preference in left-handers. These findings suggest that the task elicited a left-to-right oriented representation of magnitudes that counteracted laterality-related responses in left-handed children. The young age of children and the lack of a developmental trend towards right preference weaken the hypothesis of a cultural origin of this oriented representation. The possibility that our results are due to weaker brain lateralisation in left-handers compared to right-handers is addressed in Discussion section.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental psychology
• mathematics
• numerical cognition
• number line
• SNAs

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Jeanne Desmarestz and Geneviève Rétif-Mosca, speech therapists in Paris, for collecting the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Not included in this analysis, there was no effect of gender in the number of modifications at the right extremity of the rows (5.10 and 5.19, respectively), t(82) = 0.18, p = 0.86.