Talk:Numerical cognition

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This is, currently, a very preliminary stab at getting Numerical Cognition right. This is one of my active areas of research (see my user page), but I cannot get the whole article written right at one fell swoop. Edhubbard 13:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Areas for improvement:

  • Development currently gives a one-sided account, more on the nativist side, without counter-evidence from Piagetian camps suggesting that "full" numerical competence (i.e., conservation fo number) takes many years to develop. I don't entirely agree with this view, but its complete absence is a problem for NPOV.
  • In the section on evolutionary bases, the article stops short of monkeys, and the types of things they can do with training, like point to numbers in order, and even add.
  • The models of numerical tuning curves inferred from psychology (and which fit nicely with single-unit physiology) are *much* more sophisticated than I can convey here. This might have to become a seperate page, with a brief overview and a link to a main article.
  • There is no discussion of the distinction between cardinal and ordinal information.
  • There is no discussion of the "mental number line" which is my primary area of research, and which will relate to the number forms entry which I have also been cleaning up.
  • There is only a minimal discussion of learning and how brain activations change from learning (e.g., the shift from IPS to IPL).
  • There is no discussion of the interactions between number and language.
  • This article currently stops well short of the higher cognitive processes such as metaphorical extension that might underlie our concept of infinity and the like. This is discussed some under the "cognitive science of mathematics" page that I have linked to, but it should be at least mentioned here.

In short, we have a long way to go... Edhubbard 18:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


change a phrasing from monkey was asked. to monkey is required. I don't think ppl knows monkey talk yet :D Haaaa 12:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)