2017 Volume 41 Issue 3 Pages 295-302
Young children acquire ‘Number Sense’ through daily life. Number sense refers to ability which represent and manipulate numerosities on a mental number line. Recently, the development of the mental number line has been investigated using the number-to-position task. The previous study showed that many preschoolers used the counting strategy involving the index finger on the number line to estimate the position, and this strategy potentially influenced the type of estimations. This study examines whether the estimations of young children were influenced by the counting strategy or the numerical representations. The results show that the type of estimation reflected the mental representation of a specific unit despite the counting strategy. Therefore, it was suggested that young children used the mental representation of the specific unit while estimating, and that it affected their mental number line.
