Multiple studies have reported mathematics underachievement for students who are deaf, but the onset, scope, and causes of this phenomenon remain understudied. Early language deprivation might be one factor influencing the acquisition of numbers. In this study, we investigated a basic and fundamental mathematical skill, automatic magnitude…

The natural numbers may be our simplest, most useful, and best-studied abstract concepts, but their origins are debated. I consider this debate in the context of the proposal, by Gallistel and Gelman, that natural number system is a product of cognitive evolution and the proposal, by Carey, that it is a product of human cultural history. I offer a…

In this article we first review evidence for the approximate number system (ANS), an evolutionarily ancient and developmentally conservative cognitive mechanism for representing number without language. We then critically review five different lines of support for the proposal that symbolic representations of number build upon the ANS, and discuss…

Counting is an evolutionarily recent cultural invention of the human species. In order for humans to have conceived of counting in the first place, certain representational and logical abilities must have already been in place. The focus of this article is the origins and nature of those fundamental mechanisms that promoted the emergence of the…

Number words are generally used to refer to the exact cardinal value of a set, but cognitive scientists disagree about their meanings. Although most psychological analyses presuppose that numbers have exact semantics ("two" means exactly two), many linguistic accounts propose that numbers have lower-bounded semantics (at least two), and…

What role does language play in developing the concept of number? This question is at the center of an important current debate. To try to answer it, one must first consider what is needed to learn number words and their meaning. First, the learner has to be able to identify number words as such, that is, to distinguish them from other sorts of…

How do children learn the meanings of number words like "one," "two," and "three"? Whereas many words that children learn in early acquisition denote individual things and their properties (e.g., cats, colors, shapes), numerals, like quantifiers, denote the properties of sets. Unlike quantifiers such as "several" and "many," numerals denote…

It is of deep interest to both linguists and psychologists alike to account for how young children acquire an understanding of number words. In their commentaries, Barner and Butterworth both point out that an important question highlighted by the work of Syrett, Musolino, and Gelman, and one that remains highly controversial, is where number…