Cargando…

A generalized sense of number

Much evidence has accumulated to suggest that many animals, including young human infants, possess an abstract sense of approximate quantity, a number sense. Most research has concentrated on apparent numerosity of spatial arrays of dots or other objects, but a truly abstract sense of number should...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Arrighi, Roberto, Togoli, Irene, Burr, David C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240988/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25377454
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1791
_version_ 1782345806896955392
author Arrighi, Roberto
Togoli, Irene
Burr, David C.
author_facet Arrighi, Roberto
Togoli, Irene
Burr, David C.
author_sort Arrighi, Roberto
collection PubMed
description Much evidence has accumulated to suggest that many animals, including young human infants, possess an abstract sense of approximate quantity, a number sense. Most research has concentrated on apparent numerosity of spatial arrays of dots or other objects, but a truly abstract sense of number should be capable of encoding the numerosity of any set of discrete elements, however displayed and in whatever sensory modality. Here, we use the psychophysical technique of adaptation to study the sense of number for serially presented items. We show that numerosity of both auditory and visual sequences is greatly affected by prior adaptation to slow or rapid sequences of events. The adaptation to visual stimuli was spatially selective (in external, not retinal coordinates), pointing to a sensory rather than cognitive process. However, adaptation generalized across modalities, from auditory to visual and vice versa. Adaptation also generalized across formats: adapting to sequential streams of flashes affected the perceived numerosity of spatial arrays. All these results point to a perceptual system that transcends vision and audition to encode an abstract sense of number in space and in time.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4240988
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2014
publisher The Royal Society
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-42409882014-12-22 A generalized sense of number Arrighi, Roberto Togoli, Irene Burr, David C. Proc Biol Sci Research Articles Much evidence has accumulated to suggest that many animals, including young human infants, possess an abstract sense of approximate quantity, a number sense. Most research has concentrated on apparent numerosity of spatial arrays of dots or other objects, but a truly abstract sense of number should be capable of encoding the numerosity of any set of discrete elements, however displayed and in whatever sensory modality. Here, we use the psychophysical technique of adaptation to study the sense of number for serially presented items. We show that numerosity of both auditory and visual sequences is greatly affected by prior adaptation to slow or rapid sequences of events. The adaptation to visual stimuli was spatially selective (in external, not retinal coordinates), pointing to a sensory rather than cognitive process. However, adaptation generalized across modalities, from auditory to visual and vice versa. Adaptation also generalized across formats: adapting to sequential streams of flashes affected the perceived numerosity of spatial arrays. All these results point to a perceptual system that transcends vision and audition to encode an abstract sense of number in space and in time. The Royal Society 2014-12-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4240988/ /pubmed/25377454 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1791 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Arrighi, Roberto
Togoli, Irene
Burr, David C.
A generalized sense of number
title A generalized sense of number
title_full A generalized sense of number
title_fullStr A generalized sense of number
title_full_unstemmed A generalized sense of number
title_short A generalized sense of number
title_sort generalized sense of number
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240988/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25377454
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1791
work_keys_str_mv AT arrighiroberto ageneralizedsenseofnumber
AT togoliirene ageneralizedsenseofnumber
AT burrdavidc ageneralizedsenseofnumber
AT arrighiroberto generalizedsenseofnumber
AT togoliirene generalizedsenseofnumber
AT burrdavidc generalizedsenseofnumber