Exact Number Concepts Are Limited to the Verbal Count Range
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pitt_et_al_2021_psysci.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
1.4 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Pitt, Benjamin
Gibson, Edward
Piantadosi, Steven T
Date Issued
2022
Journal
Psychological Science
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
Pitt, Benjamin, Gibson, Edward and Piantadosi, Steven T. 2022. "Exact Number Concepts Are Limited to the Verbal Count Range." Psychological Science, 33 (3).
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
Previous findings suggest that mentally representing exact numbers larger than four depends on a verbal count routine (e.g., “one, two, three . . .”). However, these findings are controversial because they rely on comparisons across radically different languages and cultures. We tested the role of language in number concepts within a single population—the Tsimane’ of Bolivia—in which knowledge of number words varies across individual adults. We used a novel data-analysis model to quantify the point at which participants ( N = 30) switched from exact to approximate number representations during a simple numerical matching task. The results show that these behavioral switch points were bounded by participants’ verbal count ranges; their representations of exact cardinalities were limited to the number words they knew. Beyond that range, they resorted to numerical approximation. These results resolve competing accounts of previous findings and provide unambiguous evidence that large exact number concepts are enabled by language.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211034502
