Absolute Number Discrimination
- 431 Downloads
Number plays a continuous role in humans’ everyday interactions – for many, our early morning routine may involve checking the temperature outside to know whether to grab a jacket on our way out the door, or checking our pockets for correct change to grab a coffee. Likewise, number is also an important function for nonhuman animals in their daily existence – knowing how much food is available, how many offspring one has, or how many predators are approaching are all useful survival skills that may be assessed through the use of numerical discrimination.
Counting in humans is defined as a formal process of enumeration in which each item in an array must be given a unique tag (Piaget 1952). When counting is referred to colloquially in research with nonhuman animals, it is generally referring instead to simple numerical discrimination, as opposed to formal number systems or mathematical ability (the exception to this are studies which explicitly study whether animals are able to...
Keywords
Approximate Number System (ANS) File System Object Analog Magnitude System Nonhuman Animals Female LionsReferences
- Ansari, D. (2008). Effects of development and enculturation on number representation in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(4), 278–291.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Beran, M. J. (2001). Summation and numerousness judgments of sequentially presented sets of items by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 115(2), 181–191.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Beran, M. J., & Beran, M. M. (2004). Chimpanzees remember the results of one-by-one addition of food items to sets over extended time periods. Psychological Science, 15(2), 94–99.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Beran, M. J., & Rumbaugh, D. M. (2001). “Constructive” enumeration by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) on a computerized task. Animal Cognition, 4(2), 81–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Brannon, E. M. (2006). The representation of numerical magnitude. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 16(2), 222–229.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
- Brannon, E. M., & Terrace, H. S. (1998). Ordering of the numerosities 1 to 9 by monkeys. Science, 282(5389), 746–749.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Cantlon, J. F., & Brannon, E. M. (2006). Shared system for ordering small and large numbers in monkeys and humans. Psychological Science, 17(5), 401–406.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Carey, S. (1998). Knowledge of number: Its evolution and ontogeny. Science, 282(5389), 641–642.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Everett, D., Berlin, B., Gonalves, M., Kay, P., Levinson, S., Pawley, A., … & Everett, D. (2005). Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Piraha: Another look at the design features of human language. Current Anthropology, 46(4), 621–646.Google Scholar
- Feigenson, L., Dehaene, S., & Spelke, E. (2004). Core systems of number. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 307–314.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Flombaum, J. I., Junge, J. A., & Hauser, M. D. (2005). Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) spontaneously compute addition operations over large numbers. Cognition, 97(3), 315–325.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Gordon, P. (2004). Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from Amazonia. Science, 306(5695), 496–499.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Hauser, M. D., Carey, S., & Hauser, L. B. (2000). Spontaneous number representation in semi– free–ranging rhesus monkeys. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 267(1445), 829–833.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Köehler, O. (1951). The ability of birds to count. Bulletin of Animal Behaviour, 9, 41–45.Google Scholar
- Macpherson, K., & Roberts, W. A. (2013). Can dogs count? Learning and Motivation, 44(4), 241–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- McComb, K., Packer, C., & Pusey, A. (1994). Roaring and numerical assessment in contests between groups of female lions, Panthera leo. Animal Behaviour, 47(2), 379–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Merritt, D. J., DeWind, N. K., & Brannon, E. M. (2012). Comparative cognition of number representation. In T. R. Zentall & E. A. Wasserman (Eds.), Oxford handbook of comparative cognition (pp. 451–476). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
- Nieder, A. (2005). Counting on neurons: The neurobiology of numerical competence. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(3), 177–190.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Nieder, A., & Dehaene, S. (2009). Representation of number in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 32, 185–208.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Nieder, A., & Miller, E. K. (2004). Analog numerical representations in rhesus monkeys: Evidence for parallel processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(5), 889–901.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Nieder, A., Diester, I., & Tudusciuc, O. (2006). Temporal and spatial enumeration processes in the primate parietal cortex. Science, 313(5792), 1431–1435.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Pfungst, O. (1911). Clever Hans: (The horse of Mr. Von Osten.) a contribution to experimental animal and human psychology. Holt: Rinehart and Winston.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Piaget, J. (1952). The child’s conception of numbers (C. Gattegno & F. M. Hodgson, Eds. & Trans.). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
- Pica, P., Lemer, C., Izard, V., & Dehaene, S. (2004). Exact and approximate arithmetic in an Amazonian indigene group. Science, 306(5695), 499–503.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Roberts, W. A. (2010). “Counting” serially presented stimuli by human and nonhuman primates and pigeons. Learning and Motivation, 41(4), 241–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Sheffler, M. (1978). Munduruku discourse. In Grimes (Ed.), Papers on discourse (pp. 119–142). Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
- West, R. E., & Young, R. J. (2002). Do domestic dogs show any evidence of being able to count? Animal Cognition, 5(3), 183–186.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Whalen, J., Gallistel, C. R., & Gelman, R. (1999). Nonverbal counting in humans: The psychophysics of number representation. Psychological Science, 10(2), 130–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Wynn, K. (1992). Addition and subtraction by human infants. Nature, 358(6389), 749–750.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
- Xu, F., & Spelke, E. S. (2000). Large number discrimination in 6-month-old infants. Cognition, 74(1), B1–B11.CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar