Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Numerical abstraction by human infants.

P Starkey1, E S Spelke, R Gelman

  • 1University of California, Berkeley.

Cognition
|August 1, 1990
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Understanding the reach of an evidence-based public health intervention to optimise nutrition and movement behaviour at scale: The INFANT Program.

Australian and New Zealand journal of public health·2025
Same author

The Infancy of the Human Brain.

Neuron·2015
Same author

A phase II study of bevacizumab in combination with vinorelbine and trastuzumab in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Breast cancer research and treatment·2013
Same author

Does neoadjuvant bevacizumab increase surgical complications in breast surgery?

Annals of surgical oncology·2010
Same author

The feckless mother: women, poverty and social workers in wartime and post-war England.

Women's history review·2009
Same author

The impact of sharing results of a randomized breast cancer clinical trial with study participants.

Breast cancer research and treatment·2008
Same journal

Corrigendum to "Productivity matters for the neural processing of novel words, but not existing ones" Cognition Volume 274 (2026) 106593.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Investigating the origins of partisanship: What motivates children to preferentially endorse their ingroups' claims?

Cognition·2026
Same journal

People make graded judgments about the inconceivable.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

The self as an image: Appearance and belief in visual representations of one's own face.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Corrigendum to 'Consonant, vowel, and tone cues in early wordform recognition: Evidence from Cantonese-learning infants' [Cognition 275 (2026) 106624].

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Identifying distinct sources of whole number interference in children's decimal comparison: the role of numerical magnitude and inhibitory control.

Cognition·2026
See all related articles

Human infants as young as 6 months can connect numbers across different senses. This early numerical ability, based on numerosity sensitivity, emerges before language or cultural number experience.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Numerical Cognition

Background:

  • Human infants possess innate abilities that support cognitive development.
  • Early numerical cognition is crucial for understanding mathematical concepts.
  • The origins of numerical abilities in pre-linguistic infants are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether pre-linguistic infants can detect numerical correspondences between stimuli from different sensory modalities.
  • To determine if infants' ability to match numbers across senses relies on an abstract sensitivity to numerosity.
  • To explore the developmental timeline and prerequisites for the emergence of early numerical abilities.

Main Methods:

  • Presenting 6- to 8-month-old infants with sets of entities in various sensory modalities (e.g., visual, auditory).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Employing experimental paradigms to assess infants' ability to detect correspondences in the quantity of entities across modalities.
  • Analyzing infant looking times or other behavioral responses as indicators of numerical processing.

    • Main Results:

    • Infants demonstrated the ability to detect numerical correspondences between sets of items presented in different sensory modalities.
    • Evidence suggests this cross-modal numerical mapping is based on an abstract sensitivity to numerosity.
    • Performance was observed in the absence of natural relations between stimuli, language, or complex actions.

    Conclusions:

    • The capacity to process and connect numerical information across different senses is present in human infants by 6-8 months of age.
    • This early numerical competence is rooted in an abstract sensitivity to numerosity, independent of specific sensory input.
    • The findings indicate that foundational numerical abilities emerge independently of language development, motor skills, or cultural exposure to number systems.