Perception of Numbers by Human Infants

Abstract

Infants are capable of discriminating, representing, and remembering particular small numbers of items. A perceptual enumeration process called subitizing, present in 2-year-olds, probably underlies this capacity. This finding indicates that some number capacity is present before the onset of verbal counting, and it suggests that verbal counting may have precursors present during infancy.

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

“…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). Finally, the absence of increased activation in the left hemisphere linguistic perisylvian areas for numerosity estimation with respect to perceptual matching, indicates the relatively low involvement of linguistic operations in numerosity estimation, in line with the fact that non-human animals as well as pre-verbal infants are able to perform similar numerosity estimation tasks (Davis and Pérusse, 1988;Gallistel and Gelman, 1992;Starkey and Cooper, 1980). What is the nature of the computations performed by the frontal and parietal areas of the right hemisphere?…”

“…Numerosity is an abstract property of a set, since it is independent of the sensory attributes of its members and of the physical parameters of the set, such as shape, luminance, density, duration or frequency, even if it often co-varies with these parameters. Despite its abstractness, the ability to make approximate judgements on numerosity (estimation) does not depend on learning a symbolic system, as it spontaneously emerges in pre-linguistic infants (Antell and Keating, 1983;Starkey and Cooper, 1980;Xu and Spelke, 2000), and is observable in non-human species (Brannon and Terrace, 2000;Church and Meck, 1984;Davis and Pérusse, 1988). When a symbolic system -such as counting words -becomes available, exact numerosity judgements can extend to numerosities larger than those correctly estimated by infants and other species.…”

Exploring the impact of phonological awareness, visual–spatial working memory, and preschool quantity–number competencies on mathematics achievement in elementary school: Findings from a 3-year longitudinal study

“…As some researchers assume, this implies that infants can already differentiate between discrete quantities (see Antell & Keating, 1983;Bijeljac-Babic, Bertoncini, & Mehler, 1993;Huntley-Fenner & Cannon, 2000;Starkey & Cooper, 1980;Wynn, 1992; for large numerosities: Xu, Spelke, & Goddard, 2005). Others believe that infants only differentiate between the spatial extent of quantities but not between discrete amounts (see Clearfield & Mix, 1999Feigenson, Carey, & Spelke, 2002;Mix, Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1996Rousselle, Palmers, & Noël, 2004;Simon, Hespos, & Rochat, 1995; for small numerosities: Xu, Spelke, & Goddard, 2005).…”

Das competências quantitativas iniciais para o conceito de número natural: quais as trilhas possíveis?

“…De forma mais robusta, os estudos usando metodologias de habituação demonstraram que os bebês são capazes de identificar mudanças numéricas em conjuntos com pequenas quantidades (Antell & Keating, 1983;Starkey & Cooper, 1980;Starkey, Spelke, & Gelman, 1990;Strauss & Curtis, 1981, 1984 e em conjuntos com grandes quantidades (Xu & Spelke, 2000). E, ainda, são capazes de parear de forma equivalente o número de sons ouvidos com o número de objetos de um conjunto (Starkey & Spelke, 1983) e demonstram conhecimento de resultados de adições e subtrações simples (Wynn, 1992b(Wynn, , 1992c.…”