Progress in functional differentiation between drawing, writing and numerals in four- to seven-year old children

Drawing, writing and numerical notations are important ways to externally represent three basic foundational types of knowledge. Though children discriminate drawing, writing and numerals quite early (3-4 years), when they use these systems, they often make functional exchanges writing or drawing used to represent quantity and numerals used to identify some objects. In the present study, a developmental analysis showed that most four-year olds used drawing, while at age five children began to use different notational systems although the combination of writing and numerals was not yet a common strategy. At ages six and seven, children easily represented qualitative and quantitative information by combining writing and numerals although some still combined numerals, writing and drawing redundantly. Cognitive aspects of this functional differentiation are discussed