Children's Knowledge of Teen Quantities as Tens and Ones: Comparisons of Chinese, British, and American Kindergartners

Abstract

Three studies were conducted to examine the effects of individual differences and language differences on children's understanding of teen quantities (11 ≤ n ≤ 19) as counted cardinal tens and ones (embedded-ten cardinal understanding). At age 4, most Chinese children, using named-ten number words (e.g., 12 is said as "ten two"), did not show such understanding on a task in which y quantities were added to 10 quantities. At age 5, half the children of average or above intelligence who had high rote-counting sequences (M = 90) did show such understanding; those with lower rote-counting sequences did not. English-speaking 5-year-old children in England and in the United States, whose teen words obfuscate the tens and ones, showed no evidence of understanding teen quantities as cardinal tens and ones.