ABSTRACT
Scientists from many disciplines have been intrigued by the topic of how the mind represents number because of the question’s relevance to controversial topics such as thought without language, the evolution of cognition, modularity of mind, and nature vs. nurture. Some researchers believe that the abstract nature of numerical representation makes it an unlikely candidate for a cognitive capacity held by nonhuman animals and human infants. The chapter examines the evidence bearing on the nonverbal representation of number by animals and human infants. In the mode-control model, animals are thought to encode time and number automatically. Activity in the parietal lobe has also been shown to correlate with monkeys’ performance on an interval time discrimination task. The performance of monkeys thus demonstrated distance and magnitude effects typically associated with numerical discrimination in humans and other animals in a wide variety of tasks.
