Electrophysiological longitudinal evidence for shared number symbol-quantity representations in 5–6-year-old children in only the subitizing range

Whereas it was long assumed that number symbols acquire numerical meaning by associating them directly with early present non-symbolic representations, recent work suggests that this is only the case for small symbols representing quantities in the subitizing range. To investigate this, the present developmental study adopted a mixed longitudinal - cross-sectional design in combination with measurement of performance and the P2p-ERP component in symbolic and non-symbolic number comparison tasks.

Complete data was collected from twenty-six 5-6 year-olds in kindergarten and one year later in grade 1, and from young adults. Children and adults showed comparable behavioral numerical distance effects in both subitizing (1-4), and non-subitizing (6-9) ranges in both tasks. Distance effects on P2p amplitude were present in both tasks, and for both numerical ranges in adults, but only for the subitizing range in children.