ArticleLanguage learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development2017
Primitive Concepts of Number and the Developing Human Brain.
Article in Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- The neural correlates of retrieval and procedural strategies in mental arithmetic: A functional neuroimaging meta-analysis.Human brain mapping · 2023Pooled it
- Brain areas associated with numbers and calculations in children: Meta-analyses of fMRI studies.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2018Pooled it
- Number words recruit numerosity-related cortex in 3- to 5-year-old children.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Intersection of spatial and numerical cognition in the developing brain.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Structural and functional connectivity of the inferior temporal numeral area.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Developing, mature, and unique functions of the child's brain in reading and mathematics.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2019Article
- Number concepts: abstract and embodied.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Counting is an evolutionarily recent cultural invention of the human species. In order for humans to have conceived of counting in the first place, certain representational and logical abilities must have already been in place. The focus of this review is the origins and nature of those fundamental mechanisms that promoted the emergence of the human number concept. Five claims are presented that support an evolutionary view of numerical development: 1) number is an abstract concept with an innate basis in humans, 2) maturational processes constrain the development of humans' numerical representations between infancy and adulthood, 3) there is evolutionary continuity in the neural processes of numerical cognition in primates, 4) primitive logical abilities support verbal counting development in humans, and 5) primitive neural processes provide the foundation for symbolic numerical development in the human brain. We support these claims by examining current evidence from animal cognition, child development, and human brain function. The data show that at the basis of human numerical concepts are primitive perceptual and logical mechanisms that have evolutionary homologs in other primates and form the basis of numerical development in the human brain. In the final section of the review, we discuss some hypotheses for what makes human numerical reasoning unique by drawing on evidence from human and non-human primate neuroimaging research.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.