Catherine Sophian, Ph.D.

My research interests focus on early cognitive development, particularly on understanding the developmental relations between earlier and later forms of knowledge. The questions I seek to answer are, (1) what are the perceptual and/or intuitive foundations for important mathematical concepts? and, (2) what is the cognitive basis for the profound increases in the robustness and flexibility of cognitive performances with age?

Current research projects are examining:

* children's understanding of spatial and numerical ratios

* developmental relationships between numerical cognition and knowledge about continuous quantities

* children's developing understanding of mathematical units

Recent publications:

What eye fixation patterns tell us about subitizing (in press)

How do people apprehend large numerosities? (in press)

The origins of mathematical knowledge in childhood (2007, book)

Rethinking the starting point for mathematics learning (2007)

Variability is the norm in performance, but not in beliefs (2006)

Foundations for teaching mathematics to young children: Objectives and strategies for training in-service teachers (2004)

Mathematics for the future: Developing a Head Start curriculum to support mathematics learning (2004)

A prospective developmental perspective on early mathematics instruction (2004).

Young children's reasoning about many-to-one correspondences (2003).

Learning about what fits: Preschool children's reasoning about effects of object size (2002)

From objects to quantities:  Developments in preschool childrenís judgments about aggregate amount. (2000)

Perceptions of proportionality in young children:  Matching spatial ratios (2000)

Children's ways of knowing: Lessons from cognitive development research (1999)

A developmental perspective on children's counting (1998)

Units of counting: Developmental changes (1998)

When three is less than two: Early developments in children's understanding of fractional quantities (1997)

Beyond competence: The significance of performance for conceptual development (1997)

Growing points for cognitive-developmental theories: Characterizing innate foundations for learning (1997)

Proportional reasoning in young children: The parts and the whole of it (1997)

Young children's numerical cognition: What develops? (1997)