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…

Anthropological approaches to studying the contextual specificity of mathematical thought and practice in schools can productively inform descriptions and analyses of mathematical practices within and across different teaching and learning contexts. In this paper I argue for an anthropological methodological orientation that takes into…

In the present study we examined whether children with Developmental Dyscalculia (DD) exhibit a deficit in the so-called "Approximate Number System" (ANS). To do so, we examined a group of elementary school children who demonstrated persistent low math achievement over 4 years and compared them to typically developing (TD), aged-matched…

Comparing numerical performance between different languages does not only mean comparing different number-word systems, but also implies a comparison of differences regarding culture or educational systems. The Czech language provides the remarkable opportunity to disentangle this confound as there exist two different number-word systems within…

Recently, the nature of children's mental number line has received much investigation. In the number line task, children are required to mark a presented number on a physical number line with fixed endpoints. Typically, it was observed that the estimations of younger/inexperienced children were accounted for best by a logarithmic function, whereas…

Ordinality is--beyond numerical magnitude (i.e., quantity)--an important characteristic of the number system. There is converging empirical evidence that (intra)parietal brain regions mediate number magnitude processing. Furthermore, recent findings suggest that the human intraparietal sulcus (IPS) supports magnitude and ordinality in a…

Adults can represent approximate numbers of items independently of language. This approximate number system can discriminate and compare entities as varied as dots, sounds, or actions. But can multiple different types of entities be enumerated in parallel and stored as independent numerosities? Subjects who were prevented from verbally counting…

This study examined the neuronal correlates of reading Roman numerals and the changes that occur with extensive practice. Subjects were scanned by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) three times the first day of the experiment and once following two to three months of practice. This allowed comparison of brain activations with varying…