Global processing as an indicator of children´s conceptual subitizing ability in pre-school classes

The aim of this project is to use eye-tracking to investigate the relationship between pre-school class children´s global processing and conceptual subitizing skills and to thereby inform the design of a potential classroom intervention aimed at facilitating the development of subitizing. The effectiveness of that intervention will also be tested.

Eyetracking is expected to help us to discern key features of the stimuli for enhancing conceptual subitizing and to identify what features necessary for conceptual subitizing the children have not yet discerned.

It provides a variety of measures for monitoring visual attention while children respond to visual stimuli and answer computer-based questions in real-time.

Eye-tracking will also allow us to assess if and how the children change their visual attention in accordance with the offered content of the teaching situations and determine the relationship between global processing and conceptual subitizing abilitiesResults from the eyetracking component will then be used to inform the design of a classroom intervention for enhancing the children’s conceptual subitizing skills in two experimental classes (N=50) and comparing them with two control classes (N=50).

Through this, we expect that our study will unveil if and how modulation of certain features of the educational intervention will facilitate an increase in children’s subitizing skills. The control group take part in the intervention afterwards, if the results are positive.