Topic
Approximate number system
About: Approximate number system is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 341 publications have been published within this topic receiving 32072 citations. The topic is also known as: ANS.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
TL;DR: The horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus appears as a plausible candidate for domain specificity: It is systematically activated whenever numbers are manipulated, independently of number notation, and with increasing activation as the task puts greater emphasis on quantity processing.
Abstract: Did evolution endow the human brain with a predisposition to represent and acquire knowledge about numbers? Although the parietal lobe has been suggested as a potential substrate for a domain-specific representation of quantities, it is also engaged in verbal, spatial, and attentional functions that may contribute to calculation. To clarify the organisation of number-related processes in the parietal lobe, we examine the three-dimensional intersection of fMRI activations during various numerical tasks, and also review the corresponding neuropsychological evidence. On this basis, we propose a tentative tripartite organisation. The horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus (HIPS) appears as a plausible candidate for domain specificity: It is systematically activated whenever numbers are manipulated, independently of number notation, and with increasing activation as the task puts greater emphasis on quantity processing. Depending on task demands, we speculate that this core quantity system, analogous t...
2,580 citations
TL;DR: This work reviews recent behavioral and neuropsychological evidence that these ontogenetically and phylogenetically shared abilities rest on two core systems for representing number, and identifies one system for representing large, approximate numerical magnitudes, and a second system for the precise representation of small numbers of individual objects.
2,391 citations
TL;DR: This paper provides a tutorial introduction to numerical cognition, with a review of essential findings and current points of debate, and proposes a triple-code model, which assumes that numbers are mentally manipulated in an arabic, verbal or analogical magnitude code depending on the requested mental operation.
1,971 citations
TL;DR: There are large individual differences in the non-verbal approximation abilities of 14-year-old children, and that these individual Differences in the present correlate with children’s past scores on standardized maths achievement tests, extending all the way back to kindergarten.
Abstract: Human mathematical competence emerges from two representational systems. Competence in some domains of mathematics, such as calculus, relies on symbolic representations that are unique to humans who have undergone explicit teaching. More basic numerical intuitions are supported by an evolutionarily ancient approximate number system that is shared by adults, infants and non-human animals-these groups can all represent the approximate number of items in visual or auditory arrays without verbally counting, and use this capacity to guide everyday behaviour such as foraging. Despite the widespread nature of the approximate number system both across species and across development, it is not known whether some individuals have a more precise non-verbal 'number sense' than others. Furthermore, the extent to which this system interfaces with the formal, symbolic maths abilities that humans acquire by explicit instruction remains unknown. Here we show that there are large individual differences in the non-verbal approximation abilities of 14-year-old children, and that these individual differences in the present correlate with children's past scores on standardized maths achievement tests, extending all the way back to kindergarten. Moreover, this correlation remains significant when controlling for individual differences in other cognitive and performance factors. Our results show that individual differences in achievement in school mathematics are related to individual differences in the acuity of an evolutionarily ancient, unlearned approximate number sense. Further research will determine whether early differences in number sense acuity affect later maths learning, whether maths education enhances number sense acuity, and the extent to which tertiary factors can affect both.
1,480 citations
TL;DR: The preverbal system of counting and arithmetic reasoning revealed by experiments on numerical representations in animals is described and a model of the fact retrieval process accounts for the salient features of the reaction time differences and error patterns revealed by experiment on mental arithmetic.
1,351 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 24 |
| 2020 | 26 |
| 2019 | 25 |
| 2018 | 31 |
| 2017 | 28 |
| 2016 | 50 |