title: Number-space associations without language: Evidence from preverbal human infants and non-human animal species.
abstract: It is well known that humans describe and think of numbers as being represented in a spatial configuration, known as the 'mental number line'. The orientation of this representation appears to depend on the direction of writing and reading habits present in a given culture (e.g., left-to-right oriented in Western cultures), which makes this factor an ideal candidate to account for the origins of the spatial representation of numbers. However, a growing number of studies have demonstrated that non-verbal subjects (preverbal infants and non-human animals) spontaneously associate numbers and space. In this review, we discuss evidence showing that pre-verbal infants and non-human animals associate small numerical magnitudes with short spatial extents and left-sided space, and large numerical magnitudes with long spatial extents and right-sided space. Together this evidence supports the idea that a more biologically oriented view can account for the origins of the 'mental number line'. In this paper, we discuss this alternative view and elaborate on how culture can shape a core, fundamental, number-space association.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia, 8, Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rugani
authors.affiliation: Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France. dehevialola@gmail.com.|CNRS UMR 8242, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006, Paris, France. dehevialola@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Maria-Dolores
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: de Hevia
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D003210:Concept Formation; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D009903:Optical Illusions; D009949:Orientation; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012858:Size Perception; D065853:Spatial Learning; D013045:Species Specificity
keywords: Infants; Mental number line; Non-human animals; Number; Space-number association