ABSTRACT
In its simplest form, the question of domain speci®city asks only: When people process information, do they use speci®c processes for speci®c tasks, or do they use general purpose processes for many different tasks? For those who study adult cognition, this question is relatively straightforward. But for those who study cognitive development, domain speci®city has taken on special meaning because it has been invoked to explain not only how information is processed, but also how concepts originate and how learning takes place. Domain speci®city is often linked with nativism, leading to the proposal that human infants have instinctive or core knowledge for certain domains that gives us a leg up in learning (Chomsky, 1980; Dehaene, 1997; Fodor, 1983; Gelman, 1990; Leslie, 1994; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001; Wynn, 1998). In this chapter, we evaluate the evidence regarding one such domain: number. Do humans need a number sense to learn the meanings of small numbers, or can domain general processes better explain what we know about this process?
