ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore a richer sense of finger gnosis (finger knowledge) with respect to three- andfour-year-olds’ interactions with a novel iPad application (TouchCounts), focusing on their responses toan “inverse subitising” task. The direct and tactile nature of their engagement with TouchCounts leads to astriking shift from incrementing using the index finger to deployment of several fingers all-at-once (in acardinal touch gesture) to achieve a given target number that is then spoken by the iPad. This form offinger representation differs from the more ordinally-based differentiation of fingers that is discussed inthe psychology literature.

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