TABLE 1.

Core Primary Mathematical Competencies

Numerosity: The ability to accurately determine the quantity of sets of up to three to four items, or events, without counting (Sharon & Wynn, 1998; Starkey & Cooper, 1980: Strauss & Curtis, 1984; Wynn, Bloom, & Chiang, 2002).

Ordinality: An implicit understanding of more than and less than for comparison of sets of three to four items (Brannon, 2002; Cooper, 1984; Feigenson, Carey, & Hauser, 2002; Strauss & Curtis, 1984).

Counting: A nonverbal system for enumeration of small sets of items (Gallistel & Gelman, 1992; Hauser et al., 2000; Starkey, 1992), and implicit knowledge of counting principles (e.g., one to one correspondence; Gelman & Gallistel, 1978).

Simple arithmetic: Sensitivity to increases (addition) and decreases (subtraction) in the quantity of small sets of items (Boysen & Berntson, 1989; Kobayashi, Hiraki, Mugitani, & Hasegawa, 2004; Wynn, 1992).

Estimation: Inexact estimation of relative quantity, magnitude, or size (Dehaene, Spelke, Pinel, Stanescu, & Tsivkin, 1999; Feigenson, Dehaene, & Spelke, 2004; Pica et al., 2004).

Geometry: Implicit understanding of shape and spatial relations (Dehaene, Izard, Pica, & Spelke, 2006; Geary, 1995).