Abstract

In order to describe development in children's conception of number, judgement of similarities between numbers were solicited from 180 children in grade 2, 4, and 6 and three number conditions(arabic, formal, informal) were considered for analyzing which condition makes the represention of number easier. These three conditions were considered in this research because Korea has one another counting system that America or China does not has. Analysis of resulting data by SINDSCAL(one of the multidimensional scaling methods) suggested that children represent numbers not by the randomness, but by the some criteria. While 2nd graders and 4th graders represent numbers in terms of "distance"dimension，6th graders represent in terms of "distance" and "odd/even" dimension. Analyzing by number condition showed that subjects used "distance" and "odd/even" dimension in formal condition, while used " distance " dimension in arabic and informal condition. Discussions about these results are presented.