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Science 30 May 2008:
Vol. 320. no. 5880, pp. 1217 - 1220
DOI: 10.1126/science.1156540
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Reports

Log or Linear? Distinct Intuitions of the Number Scale in Western and Amazonian Indigene Cultures

Stanislas Dehaene,1,2,3,4* Véronique Izard,1,2,4,5 Elizabeth Spelke,5 Pierre Pica6

The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education.

1 INSERM, Cognitive Neuro-imaging Unit, Institut Fédératif de Recherche (IFR) 49, Gif sur Yvette, France.
2 Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, NeuroSpin center, IFR 49, Gif sur Yvette, France.
3 Collège de France, Paris, France.
4 Université Paris-Sud, IFR 49, F-91191 Gif sur Yvette, France.
5 Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
6 Unité Mixte de Recherche 7023 "Formal Structure of Language," CNRS and Paris VIII University, Paris, France.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: stanislas.dehaene{at}cea.fr

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Recruitment of an Area Involved in Eye Movements During Mental Arithmetic.
A. Knops, B. Thirion, E. M. Hubbard, V. Michel, and S. Dehaene (2009)
Science 324, 1583-1585
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Comment on "Log or Linear? Distinct Intuitions of the Number Scale in Western and Amazonian Indigene Cultures".
J. F. Cantlon, S. Cordes, M. E. Libertus, and E. M. Brannon (2009)
Science 323, 38b
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Response to Comment on "Log or Linear? Distinct Intuitions of the Number Scale in Western and Amazonian Indigene Cultures".
S. Dehaene, V. Izard, P. Pica, and E. Spelke (2009)
Science 323, 38c
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)