Seeing group structures in subitized numbers

Children’s subitizing of equal group structures and the enumeration the composite units was the subject of this study. The results were obtained from a small sample of Australian children (n=7) in their first year of school (mean age 5 years 6 months). The children were those who seemed to have emerging recognition of the structured equal groups. One-to-one interviews were designed to investigate what children instantly saw in arrangements of dots clustered in small equal-sized collections organised as multiple groups. Findings indicate that there seems to be a transition to conceptual subitizing that may well apply to multiplicative thinking. The findings warrant further investigation.