A visual sense of number.

By David C. Burr, J. Ross. Current Biology, 2007

604 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Evidence exists for a nonverbal capacity for the apprehension of number, in humans [1] (including infants [2, 3]) and in other primates [4-6]. Here, we show that perceived numerosity is susceptible to adaptation, like primary visual properties of a scene, such as color, contrast, size, and speed. Apparent numerosity was decreased by adaptation to large numbers of dots and increased by adaptation to small numbers, the effect depending entirely on the numerosity of the adaptor, not on contrast, size, orientation, or pixel density, and occurring with very low adaptor contrasts. We suggest that the visual system has the capacity to estimate numerosity and that it is an independent primary visual property, not reducible to others like spatial frequency or density of texture [7].

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fcff8ace02af4a4699ac8dd283e26623d205b0bc

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Citations in the corpus

ATTENTION AND MENTAL PAINT (2010, background): “This is strong evidence that we visually represent numerosity ( Burr & Ross , 2008 ) .”
Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking (2012, background): “…and monkeys), birds (parrots and pigeons), and mammals (horses, dogs, raccoons, rats, and dolphins)—share with humans the nonverbal ability to recognize quantity (Ardila 2010; Cantlon and Brannon 2006; Cantlon, Platt, and Brannon 2008; Dehaene, Dehaene-Lambertz, and Cohen 1998; Haun et al. 2010).”
Developmental trajectory of number acuity reveals a severe impairment in developmental dyscalculia. (2010, background): “…numerosity perception is susceptible to adaptation, suggesting that approximate number is a primary visual property like color , size, or frequency (Burr & Ross, 2008): we would directly perceive a set as containing approximately five objects (''fivish " ) much like we perceive an object as ''red…”