title: A shared numerical representation for action and perception.
abstract: Humans and other species have perceptual mechanisms dedicated to estimating approximate quantity: a sense of number. Here we show a clear interaction between self-produced actions and the perceived numerosity of subsequent visual stimuli. A short period of rapid finger-tapping (without sensory feedback) caused subjects to underestimate the number of visual stimuli presented near the tapping region; and a period of slow tapping caused overestimation. The distortions occurred both for stimuli presented sequentially (series of flashes) and simultaneously (clouds of dots); both for magnitude estimation and forced-choice comparison. The adaptation was spatially selective, primarily in external, real-world coordinates. Our results sit well with studies reporting links between perception and action, showing that vision and action share mechanisms that encode numbers: a generalized number sense, which estimates the number of self-generated as well as external events.
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.|Department of Developmental Neuroscience, Stella Maris Scientific Institute, Pisa, Italy.
authors: Giovanni
authors: 0000-0003-2796-0661
authors: G
authors: Anobile
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors: Roberto
authors: 0000-0002-5435-6729
authors: R
authors: Arrighi
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors: Irene
authors: I
authors: Togoli
authors: Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.|Institute of Neuroscience, National Research Council, Pisa, Italy.|School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
authors: David Charles
authors: 0000-0003-1541-8832
authors: DC
authors: Burr
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D013850:Thinking; D055698:Touch Perception; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: approximate number system; cross modal adaptation; cross modal perception; human; neuroscience; numerosity adaptation; numerosity perception