Researchers Find That Children as Young as 3 Possess Math Skills

Children as young as age 3 can add and subtract, and their socioeconomic background appears to have little effect on their skills, according to research at the University of Chicago.

Researchers, who have studied children at the university’s Lab School, found that toddlers from disadvantaged backgrounds may not have the language skills to answer verbal math questions. But they are able to work out problems when teachers use objects instead of verbal cues.

That’s according to Susan Levine and Janellen Huttenlocher, both psychology professors at the university, and Nancy Jordan, a former colleague.

“All children see sets of objects in the world, and they see those sets of objects added to and decreased by operations like eating,” Levine said. “What varies among kids is the amount of talk” they do and hear about numbers.

Levine and her colleagues have found that, as children approach age 3, they begin to develop nonverbal calculation. For example, researchers showed youngsters two black discs and then slid those discs under a box. As the children watched, the researchers then slid a third disc under the box and asked the children to make an identical pile of the total number of discs under the box. The children correctly made piles of three, researchers said.

Researchers also found that children as young as 3 can do more abstract calculations. The children were shown two black discs, which were then removed. Shown cards with different numbers of discs, they correctly chose a card that had a picture of two discs on it.

Lastly, the University of Chicago researchers found that, at age 4, children begin to develop even more abstract number concepts. Upon hearing two drumbeats--but no verbal instructions--most 4-year-olds who were studied were able to pick out a card with two objects on it.