Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39369595›Full record

ArticleCognition2025

Mapping and modeling the semantic space of math concepts.

Samuel Debray, Stanislas Dehaene

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Cognition, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Samuel DebrayCognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux énergies alternatives, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Electronic address: samuel.debray@ens-paris-saclay.fr.
Stanislas DehaeneCognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux énergies alternatives, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin center, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences & Lettres, Paris, France. Electronic address: stanislas.dehaene@cea.fr.

Funding

European Research Council 101095866
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Mathematics is an underexplored domain of human cognition. While many studies have focused on subsets of math concepts such as numbers, fractions, or geometric shapes, few have ventured beyond these elementary domains. Here, we attempted to map out the full space of math concepts and to answer two specific questions: can distributed semantic models, such a GloVe, provide a satisfactory fit to human semantic judgements in mathematics? And how does this fit vary with education? We first analyzed all of the French and English Wikipedia pages with math contents, and used a semi-automatic procedure to extract the 1000 most frequent math terms in both languages. In a second step, we collected extensive behavioral judgements of familiarity and semantic similarity between them. About half of the variance in human similarity judgements was explained by vector embeddings that attempt to capture latent semantic structures based on cooccurence statistics. Participants' self-reported level of education modulated familiarity and similarity, allowing us to create a partial hierarchy among high-level math concepts. Our results converge onto the proposal of a map of math space, organized as a database of math terms with information about their frequency, familiarity, grade of acquisition, and entanglement with other concepts.

Indexed as

MathematicsSemanticsVocabularyAdolescentAdultDatabases, FactualEducational StatusEnglandFemaleFranceHumansJudgmentLinear ModelsMaleNatural Language ProcessingSelf ReportGloVeLatent semantic analysisMathematical cognitionMathematical semanticsSecond order isomorphism

Identifiers

PMID39369595
PMCPMC7618406

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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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.