Abstract

Gelman and Gallistel (1986) determined five counting principles that are essential for successful counting, including the cardinal principle where children understand that the last number counted represents the quantity of a set of objects. The traditional How many? task and the Give-n task are the most common tasks that have been used to assess whether children understand the cardinal principle. However, many researchers claim that these tasks either overestimate or underestimate children's understanding of the cardinal principle. Some researchers (Baroody & Pellegrino, 2023) suggest that embedding the traditional How many? task in a game may improve its validity. In this study, 43 children (with an average age of 53 months) participated in both the traditional How many? task and a play-based version of the How many? task called Hidden Stars. They were then asked a series of follow-up questions to understand their reasoning and perspective of the two tasks. While there were not significant differences in children's success on the two tasks, through analyzing errors and qualitative responses it appears that there may be a possible slight advantage to using the play-based Hidden Stars task to assess cardinal principle knowledge. Children's qualitative responses also suggest that aspects of counting that are important to them are the same principles adults find essential for counting.

Degree

College and Department

Mathematics Education; Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/