From Core Knowledge Representations to Linguistic Numbers: An Universal Base for Counting

Could characteristics of Mundurucu number words be related to propertties of working memory?

Studies of sequence learning have outlined one possible mechanism by which complex mental representations are constructed out of simpler primitives: the human ability to extract complex nested structures from sequential inputs. Experiments in infants, preschoolers, and adults without access to education have demonstrated the existence of innate “core knowledge” for space, endowing humans with spontaneous intuitions of geometry. The question therefore arises whether a capacity for the internal representation and manipulation of nested sequences also underlies the acquisition of mathematics. We propose to formalize the human sensitivity to mathematical rules through a “language of thought” that allows the formation of complex structures

Accueil Parcourir Services Documentation HAL Poster De Conférence Année : 2019 Perceptual Foundations of Euclidean Geometry Véronique Izard (1, 2) , Pierre Pica (3, 4) , Elizabeth Spelke (1, 5) 1 Departement of Psychology 2 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 3 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage 4 ICE - Instituto do Cérebro, UFRN, Natal 5 Harvard University Résumé Euclidean geometry defines objects that can be realized in space, and may therefore be founded in spatial perception. We investigated whether the perception of small, 2-dimen- sional visual forms could provide cognitive foundations for Euclidean knowledge, by asking two questions. First, are humans sensitive to form variations that are relevant to Eu- clidean geometry (e.g. changes in angle)? Second, can ob- servers easily disregard variations that are irrelevant to Eu- clidean geometry (e.g., changes in scale)? Participants from the U.S. (age 3-34 years) and from the Amazon (age 5-67) were asked to locate deviants in panels of 6 forms of vari- able orientation. Results indicate that perception of forms aligns with a restricted version of Euclidean geometry, where forms are defined in terms of metric proportions and global size, but mirror images are assimilated. Moreo- ver, children below 6 did not clearly analyze forms in terms of the shape property of angle.

In the firtst years of life, conceptions of exact number develop gradually. Three milestone have been described.