Representaciones numéricas con dedos y desarrollo aritmético temprano

Resumen

Numbers are part of our everyday lives and we use them every day to know what time it is, to calculate how long it takes us to get to work, and to determine the price of goods. We find numbers on the door of the house we live in, on the train that transports us from one place to another, on the license plates of cars, on dates in the calendar. In short, we are surrounded by numbers that help us to bring order to our thoughts. Numbers allow us to perform operations and to do calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division); knowledge of arithmetic skills is therefore essential for a person's overall development. The basis of all this knowledge lies at the onset of formal education, particularly in preschool (i.e. ages 3 to 5 in Spain). Having a solid foundation to support subsequent mathematics learning could ensure that children are better equipped in this area and that they will become more autonomous and independent in the future. Identifying those skills which constitute the precursors of numerical knowledge and performance in mathematics therefore enables us to ensure that children receive adequate mathematical instruction and can manage numbers and operations with ease. This doctoral thesis has been carried out within this framework, the main purpose being to explore numerical processing involving finger numeral representations in preschool children. The objective of this thesis was "to explore recognition of finger numeral representations among children enrolled in preschool and to analyze the relationship it has with other early numerical processing skills and with mathematical achievement”. In short, this Doctoral Thesis represents a further step in understanding the relationship between fingers and numbers, one that is not limited to finger gnosis or finger-counting but instead is based on the recognition of finger display representations, or rather, representations of cardinality. Our results have shown that the mere recognition of these representations (which implies a visual act, without the need to execute a motor act) is related both to numerical processing skills and to mathematical achievement in preschool education. This thesis constitutes a first step in the comprehension of this relationship and one more step towards the inclusion of the use of fingers in educational contexts, especially at an early age when children begin to learn numbers and arithmetic operations.