ABSTRACT
The newborn child is confronted with a sea of sensation and in the course of life’s learning begins making sense of it all. Children usually do this with much greater speed than psychologists once believed. We now know that in the very first days children can discern between smaller and greater quantities, and by six months show a beginning awareness of the permanence of number and simple laws (Wynn 1992). From such beginnings we develop all that characterises the adult mathematical mind.
