Thirty years of knower-levels: A systematic review of the Give-N task

The Give-N (give-a-number) task has become a popular assessment of children’s number word learning since Wynn’s (1990; 1992) seminal work 30 years ago. Using the Give-N task, numerous studies have shown that children learn the first few number words slowly and effortfully, before they understand how counting represents number. We conducted a systematic review of studies using the Give-N task to provide an overview of the task’s theoretical and methodological significance and document variations in its administration and scoring. We found quite a lot of variation in how the task has been used and interpreted in the literature. Such variations include, for example, whether children are asked to count on every trial, whether the study adopts a titration method, the type of stimuli used, and the scoring criteria used for knower-level classifications. Moving forward with theory and methodology for research in children’s acquisition of number words and counting requires 1) reflection on the limitations of classifying children’s performance on the Give-N task in the knower-level framework and 2) consistent reporting of Give-N methodology