ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
An emergentist perspective on the origin of number sense.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Towards a unified biology of vertebrate number sense.Communications biology · 2026Review
- Categorical Representation of Numerosity in the Pigeon Entopallium: Coding Format and Temporal Dynamics.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Quantity Estimation by Repeated Comparative Judgments.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- Numerosity adaptation suppresses early visual responses.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Investigating the intrinsic top-down dynamics of deep generative models.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Are three zebras more than three frogs: examining conceptual and physical congruency in numerosity judgements of familiar objects.Psychological research · 2024Article
- A number sense as an emergent property of the manipulating brain.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Disparate processing of numerosity and associated continuous magnitudes in rats.Science advances · 2024Article
- Emergence of number sense through the integration of multimodal information: developmental learning insights from neural network models.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Quantum spin models for numerosity perception.PloS one · 2023Article
- Numerosity tuning in human association cortices and local image contrast representations in early visual cortex.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Role of Lateral Inhibition on Visual Number Sense.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2022Article
- More linear than log? Non-symbolic number-line estimation in 3- to 5-year-old children.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Can we get human nature right?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence? A discussion.Learning & behavior · 2021Article
- Learning Numerosity Representations with Transformers: Number Generation Tasks and Out-of-Distribution Generalization.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Do estimates of numerosity really adhere to Weber's law? A reexamination of two case studies.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Article
- Numerosities and Other Magnitudes in the Brains: A Comparative View.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Electrophysiological Signatures of Numerosity Encoding in a Delayed Match-to-Sample Task.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
The finding that human infants and many other animal species are sensitive to numerical quantity has been widely interpreted as evidence for evolved, biologically determined numerical capacities across unrelated species, thereby supporting a 'nativist' stance on the origin of number sense. Here, we tackle this issue within the 'emergentist' perspective provided by artificial neural network models, and we build on computer simulations to discuss two different approaches to think about the innateness of number sense. The first, illustrated by artificial life simulations, shows that numerical abilities can be supported by domain-specific representations emerging from evolutionary pressure. The second assumes that numerical representations need not be genetically pre-determined but can emerge from the interplay between innate architectural constraints and domain-general learning mechanisms, instantiated in deep learning simulations. We show that deep neural networks endowed with basic visuospatial processing exhibit a remarkable performance in numerosity discrimination before any experience-dependent learning, whereas unsupervised sensory experience with visual sets leads to subsequent improvement of number acuity and reduces the influence of continuous visual cues. The emergent neuronal code for numbers in the model includes both numerosity-sensitive (summation coding) and numerosity-selective response profiles, closely mirroring those found in monkey intraparietal neurons. We conclude that a form of innatism based on architectural and learning biases is a fruitful approach to understanding the origin and development of number sense.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The origins of numerical abilities'.
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