Comment on "Log or Linear? Distinct Intuitions of the Number Scale in Western and Amazonian Indigene Cultures"
Jessica F. Cantlon,1,3*
Sara Cordes,1,2
Melissa E. Libertus,1,2
Elizabeth M. Brannon1,2
Dehaene
et al. (Reports, 30 May 2008, p. 1217) argued that native
speakers of Mundurucu, a language without a linguistic numerical
system, inherently represent numerical values as a logarithmically
spaced spatial continuum. However, their data do not rule out
the alternative conclusion that Mundurucu speakers encode numbers
linearly with scalar variability and psychologically construct
space-number mappings by analogy.
2 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
3 Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jfc2{at}duke.edu
