Children differ in how much they spontaneously pay attention to
quantitative aspects of their natural environment. We studied how this
spontaneous tendency to focus on numerosity (SFON) is related to
subitizing-based enumeration and verbal and object counting skills. In
this exploratory study, children were tested individually at the age of
4–5 years on these skills. Results showed 2 primary relationships in
children's number skills development. Performance in a number sequence
production task, which is closely related to ordinal number sequence
without reference to cardinality, is directly associated with SFON.
Second, the association of SFON and object counting skills, which
require relating cardinal and ordinal aspects of number, is mediated by
subitizing-based enumeration. This suggests that there are multiple
pathways to enumeration skills during development.