Finger numeral representations contribute to acquiring number semantic

Resumen

The role of fingers in children’s developing quantitative skills has received increasing attention fromresearchers in recent years. Since the fingers can be an external aid to represent numbers, it has beensuggested that they could play a functional role in the development of basic numerical abilities (DiLuca & Pesenti, 2011; Moeller et al., 2011), and they have been considered as a mediator between anumber sense and a symbolically represented number concept (Andres et al., 2008; Fayol & Seron,2005). Surprisingly, no firm empirical evidence has been provided to support the view that canonicalfinger configurations facilitate the learning of number semantics and symbols in children. This wasthe aim of our study. For this purpose, 148 typically developing kindergartners were assessed, 50 4-years-old children and 98 5-years-old children. Two hierarchical regression analyses were conductedto investigate to which extent the efficiency of processing finger configurations explained a uniquepart of the variance in a task that assess number semantic access such as symbolic magnitudecomparison task. Intellectual ability, mathematic achievement, digit identification, dot counting, dotpatterns and finger configurations were included in the analyses. The model explained 66.7 % of thevariance in symbolic magnitude comparison in 4-years-old children and 46 % of the variance in 5-years-old children. The best predictor of symbolic magnitude comparison in 4-years-old children wasdot patterns (ß = .58, p < .001), a task like dot counting, but in this case the dots appeared ordered inpatterns (like those on dices). On the contrary, in 5-years-old children the best predictor was fingerconfigurations (ß = .53, p < .001). These data would suggest that finger configurations may only be arelevant factor in 5-years-old children, but not in 4-years-old children, where counting is a betterpredictor of symbolic magnitude comparison task. These findings would support the use of fingerconfigurations as a bridge between numerical quantities and their symbolic representation, but only inchildren from the age of five upwards.