Resumen

Much research has been demonstrating that deaf children underachieve in mathematics in comparison to hearing children. If the underachievement is comprehensive to all level of schooling and affects counting, computational and problem solving abilities, then, it is necessary to investigate whether this achievement gap is already present during the early childhood ducation. The present study nvestigated young hearing children's and deaf signers’ knowledge of initial mathematical concepts and procedures. The results revealed no differences in the mental representations of quantitative nformation by deaf signers and all groups of hearing children. But significant difference was found on the symbolic numerical skills between groups, suggesting that these skills are dependent on individual’s experiences and are affected by environmental factors.