Numerical abstraction by human infants

Exact and approximate judgements of visual and auditory numerosity: An fMRI study

“…Even if such modality invariance has to be taken with the care generally devoted to null effects, it is to be noted that it comes as a confirmation of several previous observations and is predicted by a computational model of number processing. For example, previous behavioural studies showed identical performance and cost-free transfer of numerosity across modalities of stimulus presentation, both in adults and in infants (Barth et al, 2003;Barth et al, 2005;Church and Meck, 1984;Starkey et al, 1990). Such modality-invariance is in line with a model of number processing that postulates an abstract supramodal internal representation of numerical quantity (Dehaene and Changeux, 1993).…”

Are numbers special? An overview of chronometric, neuroimaging, developmental and comparative studies of magnitude representation

“…Moreover, the precision with which numerosities are discriminated increases with age, with a similar trend in both modalities (Xu and Arriaga, 2007;Lipton and Spelke, 2003). In addition, in the small number range, infants have been shown to be able to compare stimuli across modalities (visual and auditive modalities: Starkey et al, 1983Starkey et al, , 1990; but see Moore et al, 1987;Mix et al, 1997, for failures to replicate; Kobayashi et al, 2005;visual and haptic modalities: Féron et al, 2006). The fact that discrimination performance is identical across modalities might be coincidental or it could reflect the evolution of a domain-general comparison process.…”

Spontaneous number discrimination of multi-format auditory stimuli in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)

“…Starkey, Spelke, & Gelman, 1990). Such an ambiguity, however, cannot affect the present playback method where the test period starts only after Fig.…”