ABSTRACT
Children as young as three months old rely on subitizing, a quick apprehension of numerosity for a set of objects, when quickly shown two or three items (Dehaene, 2011; Kaufman, Lord, Reese, & Volkman, 1949). Based on an evaluation of young children’s engagement with Building Blocks, an early childhood computer program, Clements and Sarama (2007) characterized the processes preschool through second-grade students relied upon when subitizing, by distinguishing two main types of subitizing activity: perceptual and conceptual subitizing. Researchers (e.g. De Smedt, Noël, Gilmore, & Ansari, 2013; Torbeyns, Gilmore, & Verschaffel, 2015) argue that the mathematical development of preschool-aged children is rarely investigated, as most of the early childhood intervention studies in mathematics education focus on kindergarten children’s mathematical development. Furthermore, children coming from low-socioeconomic households tend to have lower mathematical achievement scores by third grade, suggesting that early mathematics interventions for this underserved population may benefit these children prior to entering kindergarten (Seo & Ginsburg, 2004).
