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Science 2 January 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5910, p. 38
DOI: 10.1126/science.1164878
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Technical Comments

Response to Comment on "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 Pierre Pica,6 Elizabeth Spelke5

The performance of the Mundurucu on the number-space task may exemplify a general competence for drawing analogies between space and other linear dimensions, but Mundurucu participants spontaneously chose number when other dimensions were available. Response placement may not reflect the subjective scale for numbers, but Cantlon et al.'s proposal of a linear scale with scalar variability requires additional hypotheses that are problematic.

1 Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Institut Fédératif de Recherche (IFR) 49, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
2 Commissariat àl'Energie Atomique, NeuroSpin Center, IFR 49, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
3 Collège de France, Paris, France.
4 Université Paris-Sud, IFR49, 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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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)