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Science 2 January 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5910, p. 38
DOI: 10.1126/science.1164773
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Technical Comments

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.

1 Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
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

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