| Number sense is an intuitive understanding of the relationship between number meaning and quantity.As a child’s early mathematical ability,it plays an important role in predicting children’s future mathematical achievement.A review of previous studies shows that there is still controversy about the mathematical ability of children with autism,and no unified conclusion has emerged.Under the background that the state advocates the participation of special children in integrated education,exploring the influencing factors of number sense of autistic children will help them overcome difficulties and adapt to study and life as soon as possible,and also provide psychological basis for school teaching.In the development process of children’s number sense,many factors play a role,among which the approximate number system is the most important factor to determine the difference of individual number sense.At the same time,the relationship between approximate number system and number sense is not linear,but may be mediated by other domain general abilities(such as executive function)and domain specific abilities(such as symbolic magnitude representation).Therefore,this study takes autistic children aged 3-7 years as the research object to explore the number sense of autistic children and its influencing factors,including three sub-studies,In Study 1,approximate number system acuity,number sense,and possibly mediating executive function in children with autism were measured using the point comparison task,the brief number sense Test,the day-night Stroop,the red-blue Stroop,the picture working memory task,the number backward task,the dimension change card sorting task,and the number size comparison task(Pack Four variables,including inhibitory control,working memory and cognitive flexibility)and symbolic magnitude representation,were used to compare the developmental characteristics of autistic children with those of typical developing children.In the second study,the mediating model of executive function between approximate number system acuity and number sense was tested.In the third study,we explored whether symbolic magnitude representation mediated the relationship between approximate quantitative system acuity and number sense.The results showed that:(1)the approximate number system acuity,number sense,executive function and symbolic magnitude representation of children with autism were significantly lower than those of children with typical development;(2)In children with autism,executive function does not mediate between approximate number system acuity and number sense after controlling for intellectual and verbal abilities;(3)After controlling for intelligence and verbal ability,symbolic magnitude representation mediated the relationship between approximate number system and number sense in children with autism.These results indicate that children with autism have defects in approximate number system acuity,number sense,executive function and symbolic number representation.In the future,the mathematical ability of children with autism can be improved by strengthening the curriculum for symbolic number representation. |
