Qualitative Differences in Neural Signatures of Number Processing Track Conceptual Change in Preschool Children

We measured event-related potentials in preschool-aged children (3-4 years, N=129) before or after demonstrating understanding of cardinality. Understanding cardinality appears to change how children allocate attention to objects, with less advanced children showing signatures of object individuation and more advanced children showing signatures of set-based processing of object arrays.