Mathematical Operations Throughout the Life Span

Koleen McCrink
Department of Psychology
Harvard University

What are the origins of our abilities to perform mathematical 
operations?  Empirical studies on young infants'  
mathematical understanding mainly focus on the ability to represent  
and discriminate one amount from another.  In this talk, I will  
present evidence that children are able to go beyond simple  
discrimination of magnitudes, and use these numerical representations  
in a productive fashion.  The abilities to add, subtract, multiply,  
and compute ratios will be examined in infants, young children, and  
adults, in an attempt to determine the nature of the underlying  
cognitive mechanisms.  In this way, we gain a fuller understanding of  
the starting and ending points of a critical capacity that provides a  
foundation for our daily interactions in the world.