SUMMARYThis paper considers whether pre‐school children can perceive and remember quantity relations, and compares the relative ease of relational and absolute codes for these children. The methods used in former experiments which seem to suggest that young children cannot code relations such as “larger” and “smaller” are criticized. An experiment with 120 4‐yr‐old children is described which avoids the weaknesses of these earlier experiments. The results of this experiment, which directly compares relative and absolute tasks, strongly suggest, (i) that pre‐school children code quantity relations very well, and (ii) that, contrary to previous suggestions, these children find it easier to code relations than to code