Relationship between Seriation, Transitivity, and Explicit Ordinal Number Comprehension

Abstract

In this study the predictive relationship between seriation, transitivity, and explicit knowledge of ordinal number, as measured with number-line comprehension tasks and the Number Facility test of Thurstone are reported. Subjects were 170 4- to 7-yr.-old children from kindergarten and primary school Grades 1 and 2. The transitivity and seriation tasks were administered at the beginning of the school year. One year later, the subjects were tested again on number-line comprehension and the Number Facility test. Two scoring criteria were employed for transitivity, judgment-only and judgment-plus-explanation. A strong relationship of .74 was found between seriation and number-line comprehension. Moderate relationships of, respectively, .48 and .47 were observed between transitivity (for both scoring criteria) and number-line comprehension. Seriation also showed the strongest predictive relation with the Number Facility test of .76. The predictive values of transitivity according to the judgment only criterion and transitivity judgment-plus-explanation on the Number Facility Test were, respectively, .50 and .60. In multiple regression analysis, no significant increase in the predictive value on number-line comprehension was observed for any combination of seriation and transitivity. However, the only significant increase in the predictive value on the Number Facility test of .81 was observed for the combination of seriation and transitivity according to the judgment-and-explanation criteria.