Early Principles Aid Initial but not Later Conceptions of Number

Our account of number concepts shares with Piaget and Szeminska’s (1941) the assumption that infants and children are actively involved in the construction of their knowledge. Unlike Piaget and Szeminska, we grant infants some skeletal domain-relevant structures, ones that help them search and use environments, assimilate and accommodate. We do not assume that such implicit knowledge is well-articulated. Early principles help children find and attend to what is relevant and therefore start them down the right developmental path. Although these structures are outline in form, they help keep together domain-relevant bits of material before their relationships to each other are understood.