Detection of counting pseudoerrors: What helps children accept them?

The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez

Counting is a complex cognitive process that is paramount to arithmetical development at school. The improvement of counting skills of children depends on their understanding of the logical and conventional rules involved. While the logical rules are mandatory and related to one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinal principles, conventional rules are optional and associated with social customs. This study contributes to unravel the conceptual understanding of counting rules of children. It explores, with a developmental approach, the performance of children on non-routine counting detection tasks, their confidence in their answers (metacognitive monitoring skills), and their ability to change a wrong answer by deferring to the opinion of a unanimous majority who justified or did not justify their claims. Hundred and forty nine children aged from 5 to 8 years were randomized to one of the experimental conditions of the testimony of teachers: with (n = 74) or without justification (n = 75). Participants judged the correctness of different types of counting procedures presented by a computerized detection task, such as (a) pseudoerrors that are correct counts where conventional rules are violated (e.g., first counting six footballs, followed by other six basketballs that were interspersed along the row), and (b) compensation errors that are incorrect counts where logical rules were broken twice (e.g., skipping the third element of the row and then labeling the sixth element with two number words, 5 and 6). Afterwards, children rated their confidence in their detection answer with a 5-point scale. Subsequently, they listened to the testimony of the teachers and showed either conformity or non-conformity. The participants considered both compensation errors and pseudoerrors as incorrect counts in the detection task. The analysis of the confidence of children in their responses suggested that they were not sensitive to their incorrect performance. Finally, children tended to conform more often after hearing a justification of the testimony than after hearing only the testimonies of the teachers. It can be concluded that the age range of the evaluated children failed to recognize the optional nature of conventional counting rules and were unaware of their misconceptions. Nevertheless, the reasoned justifications of the testimony, offered by a unanimous majority, promoted considerable improvement in the tendency of the children to revise those misconceptions.

Children’s learning from others: Conformity to unconventional counting

The current study investigated whether children’s conformity to a majority testimony influenced their willingness to revise their own erroneous counting knowledge. The content of the testimonies focused on conventional rules of counting, by means of pseudoerrors (i.e., unconventional counts) occurring during a detection task. In this work measurements were taken at two different time points. At time 1 children aged 5 to 7 years ( N = 88) first made independent judgments on the correctness of unconventional counting procedures presented by means of a computerized detection task. Subsequently, they watched a video in which four teachers (unanimous majority) or three (non-unanimous majority) made correct claims about the counts and children had to decide whether the informants were right or not, and justify their answers. Our participants conformed significantly more when the correct testimony was provided by a unanimous majority than by a non-unanimous majority. In addition, in two of the three pseudoerrors presented, there was no difference in the children’s tendency to conform to unconventional counts as age increased. At time 2, which was taken to test whether the effect of the testimony was maintained over time, the responses of the 32 children (16 from each age group) who had endorsed the claims of the unanimous majority at time 1 revealed that teachers’ testimonies only had a lasting influence on elementary school children’s understanding of conventional counting rules.