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Inhibition, conflict detection, and number conservation

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Abstract

The acquisition of number conservation is a critical step in children’s numerical and mathematical development. Classic developmental studies have established that children’s number conservation is often biased by misleading intuitions. However, the precise nature of these conservation errors is not clear. A key question is whether conservation errors result from a failure to inhibit the misleading intuitions or from a failure to detect that these intuitions are erroneous in the first place. The present paper focuses on this fundamental conservation error or conflict sensitivity issue. We review behavioral and neuroimaging work that suggests that non-conserving preschoolers detect that their response is questionable and are less ignorant about conservation than their well-documented errors might have previously suggested.

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Acknowledgments

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR-12-JSH2-0007-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, Unité 8240 LaPsyDÉ, Paris, France

    Amélie Lubin, Grégory Simon, Olivier Houdé & Wim De Neys

  2. LaPsyDÉ (Unité CNRS 8240, Université Paris Descartes), Sorbonne Paris Cité-Labo A. Binet, 46, rue Saint Jacques, 75005, Paris, France

    Amélie Lubin, Grégory Simon, Olivier Houdé & Wim De Neys

  3. Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, Unité 8240 LaPsyDÉ, Caen, France

    Amélie Lubin, Grégory Simon, Olivier Houdé & Wim De Neys

  4. Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

    Olivier Houdé

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  1. Amélie Lubin
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  2. Grégory Simon
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  4. Wim De Neys
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Correspondence to Wim De Neys.

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Lubin, A., Simon, G., Houdé, O. et al. Inhibition, conflict detection, and number conservation. ZDM Mathematics Education 47, 793–800 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-014-0649-0

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