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Abstract
Early number learning is a reliable predictor of children’s later math knowledge and academic success (e.g., Duncan et al., 2007; Geary et al., 2018). Decades of research have tried to help advance this learning process with the aim to close the achievement gap caused by individual differences in early number knowledge. Recent studies have shown that cardinal number gestures have the potential to play an important role in early number learning (Butts et al., in prep; Gunderson et al., 2015; Gibson et al., under review; Oswald et al., in prep). However, it remains unclear how number gestures may specifically do so. In the current study, we explore one possible mechanism by which number gestures may support number knowledge, by enhancing children’s understanding of cardinal equivalence. In this study, we compared 2.5 to 4.5-year-old children’s ability to match homogeneous and heterogeneous sets of objects to sets of black dots and to number gestures. Our results showed that children were more accurate at mapping dissimilar sets to number gestures than to nonsymbolic sets of dots. Not only do these results support the hypothesis that number gestures may help children understand the cardinal equivalence, but also offer strong evidence that children may benefit from number gestures’ hybrid feature of being both iconic and symbolic representations of numbers. Together, these findings expand the current understanding of young children’s understanding of number gestures and highlight their potential role as a pedagogical tool in early number learning.