Numerical Cognition: More or Less

Source: Laboratories of Nicholaus Noles and Judith Danovitch—University of Louisville

One of the goals of the modern education system is to teach children mathematical literacy. They are taught to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and this base knowledge is used to support learning about geometry, algebra, calculus, physics, and statistics. School-aged children usually acquire these skills in formal educational settings, but the foundation of mathematical understanding is developed much earlier in life.

As infants, humans begin to form the rough representations that allow them to make judgments about number, and perhaps the first numerical concept that humans develop is the idea of less versus more. However, probing these concepts can be challenging, because even if babies have some understanding of number, they have very few ways of showing off what they know. What they can do is crawl, eat, cry, and sleep. Thus, researchers developed a task using this limited set of responses to investigate whether babies can mentally represent number.

This experiment demonstrates how researchers can creatively use food to study concepts of numerical cognition in infants using the method by Feigenson, Carey, and Hauser.¹

Recruit 12-month-old infants. For the purposes of this demonstration, only one child is tested. Larger sample sizes (as in the Feigenson, Carey, and Hauser study¹) are recommended when conducting any experiments.

Participants should be healthy, have no history of developmental disorders, and have normal hearing and vision.
Because infants of this age can be uncooperative or fussy (e.g., refuse to watch a demonstration or fall asleep during testing), extra participants may need to

In order to see significant results, researchers would have to test at least 16 infants in each condition, not including infants dropped for failing to complete the task. Infants presented with 1 vs. 2 crackers and 2 vs. 3 crackers typically selected the container containing more crackers (Figure 1). However, infants typically showed no strong preference for the container holding more crackers when presented with 3 vs. 4 crackers.

Infants consistently chose the container

Although infants are limited in the number of objects they can represent at any given time, the fact that they can represent 2 vs. 3, or up to five items, at one time is cited as evidence that even very young infants can represent number and make comparisons between different values. The method described here can also be applied to measuring how other species, such as dogs and chimps, reason about number.

Infants are impressively capable of representing number and making comparison

Feigenson, L., Carey, S., & Hauser, M. The representations underlying infants’ choice of more: Object files versus analog magnitudes. Psychological Science., 13, 150-156 (2002).

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