Dominic J. Gibson, Talia Berkowitz. Children’s Acquisition of Number Concepts: Exploring the Challenges of Early Number Learning 

Improving children’s early number competencies is a critical component of addressing the mathematics achievement gap both between the U.S. and other countries, and between lowand high-income communities within the U.S. In the proposed study, we plan to address the challenges facing children as they learn the numerical system by providing a more nuanced picture of number development. The main questions driving this study are: 1) What characteristics of number prove challenging to children in the early stages of number development and 2) What are the challenges that children continue to face even once they pass standard tests of number knowledge. An overarching goal of this study while exploring both of these questions is to delineate what, if any, differences in children’s numerical development are associated with socio-economic status (SES). Accordingly, this study focuses on designing new training methods and measuring their effectiveness at different stages of numerical development, while also examining the effect of SES on differences in knowledge and effectiveness of instruction.

Dominic J. Gibson
(Psychology)

Talia Berkowitz
(Psychology)