Subitizing: What Is It? Why Teach It?.

Three pictures hang in front of a six month-old child. The first shows two dots, the others show one dot and three dots. The infant hears three drumbeats. Her eyes move to the picture with three dots. Young children spontaneously use the ability to recognize and discriminate small numbers of objects (Klein and Starkey 1988). But some elementary school children cannot immediately name the number of pips showing on the dice. What is this ability? When and how does it develop? Is it a special way of counting? Should we teach it?

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