title: Non-symbolic arithmetic in adults and young children.
abstract: Five experiments investigated whether adults and preschool children can perform simple arithmetic calculations on non-symbolic numerosities. Previous research has demonstrated that human adults, human infants, and non-human animals can process numerical quantities through approximate representations of their magnitudes. Here we consider whether these non-symbolic numerical representations might serve as a building block of uniquely human, learned mathematics. Both adults and children with no training in arithmetic successfully performed approximate arithmetic on large sets of elements. Success at these tasks did not depend on non-numerical continuous quantities, modality-specific quantity information, the adoption of alternative non-arithmetic strategies, or learned symbolic arithmetic knowledge. Abstract numerical quantity representations therefore are computationally functional and may provide a foundation for formal mathematics.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. hbarth@alum.mit.edu
authors.forename: Hilary
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Barth
authors.forename: Kristen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: La Mont
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lipton
authors.forename: Stanislas
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dehaene
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kanwisher
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Spelke
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological; D011930:Reaction Time; D013561:Symbolism; D014796:Visual Perception