The cultural origins of symbolic number.
Name
Abeille et al 2020.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.02 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
9adb85045f4b03f118f4f0240d39415a
Author(s)
O'Shaughnessy, David M
Gibson, Edward A
Piantadosi, Steven T
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Psychological Review
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Citation
O'Shaughnessy, David M, Gibson, Edward and Piantadosi, Steven T. 2021. "The cultural origins of symbolic number.." Psychological Review.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
It is popular in psychology to hypothesize that representations of exact number are innately determined-in particular, that biology has endowed humans with a system for manipulating quantities which forms the primary representational substrate for our numerical and mathematical concepts. While this perspective has been important for advancing empirical work in animal and child cognition, here we examine six natural predictions of strong numerical nativism from a multidisciplinary perspective, and find each to be at odds with evidence from anthropology and developmental science. In particular, the history of number reveals characteristics that are inconsistent with biological determinism of numerical concepts, including a lack of number systems across some human groups and remarkable variability in the form of numerical systems that do emerge. Instead, this literature highlights the importance of economic and social factors in constructing fundamentally new cognitive systems to achieve culturally specific goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1037/REV0000289
