One, two, three, many – Subitizing in active touch

Plaisier, Myrthe A.; Tiest, Wouter M. Bergmann; Kappers, Astrid M. L.

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2009.04.003

Cited by 61 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Moreover, the three groups of participants presented similarly accurate and fast performance [|ER| and log(CV)] within the subitizing range. Therefore, our data clearly demonstrate that subitizing is a general perceptual mechanism that extends beyond visual to tactile (Plaisier et al, 2009a) and auditory (Camos & Tillmann, 2008) stimuli. They also allow us to rule out the possibility that participants in the original Riggs et al (2006) study enumerated the number of fingers stimulated within the subitizing range using visual information, since sighted-blindfolded participants performed similarly to sighted-seeing participants for small array sizes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

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Subitizing in congenitally blind adults

2010

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We investigated the role of vision in tactile enumeration within and outside the subitizing range. Congenitally blind and sighted (blindfolded) participants were asked to enumerate quickly and accurately the number of fingers stimulated. Both groups of participants enumerated one to three fingers quickly and accurately but were much slower and less accurate with four to nine fingers. Within the subitizing range, blind participants performed no differently from both sighted (blindfolded) and sighted-seeing participants. Outside of the subitizing range, blind and sighted-seeing participants showed better performance than did sighted-blindfolded participants, suggesting that lack of access to the predominant sensory modality does affect performance. Together, these findings further support the claim that subitizing is a general perceptual mechanism and demonstrate that vision is not necessary for the development of the subitizing mechanism.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Riggs et al's results are of theoretical importance because they suggest that subitizing is a general perceptual process, not one restricted to the visual modality. Similar results were recently replicated in active touch by Plaisier, Bergmann Tiest, and Kappers (2009a) and in the auditory domain by Camos and Tillmann (2008).…”

supporting

confidence: 80%

Subitizing in congenitally blind adults

2010

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“…However, non-visual stimuli have been often used as well. Non-verbal numerical abilities in our species have been reported with both auditory (Agrillo et al, 2010b;Lipton and Spelke, 2003) and tactile (Krause et al, 2013;Plaisier et al, 2009) stimuli with apparently no difference in number acuity across the sensory modalities involved (Feigenson, 2007). Concerning nonhuman primates, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were shown to compare auditory quantities in a way that closely resembled how they compared visual quantities (Beran, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Non-visual numerical discrimination in a blind cavefish (Phreatichthys andruzzii)

Bisazza

Tagliapietra

Bertolucci

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Over a decade of comparative studies, researchers have found that rudimentary numerical abilities are widespread among vertebrates. While experiments in mammals and birds have employed a variety of stimuli (visual, auditory and tactile), all fish studies involved visual stimuli and it is unknown whether fish can process numbers in other sensory modalities. To fill this gap, we studied numerical abilities in Phreatichthys andruzzii, a blind cave-dwelling species that evolved in the phreatic layer of the Somalia desert. Fish were trained to receive a food reward to discriminate between two groups of objects placed in opposite positions of their home tank. In Experiment 1, subjects learned to discriminate between two and six objects, with stimuli not controlled for non-numerical continuous variables that covary with numbers, such as total area occupied by stimuli or density. In Experiment 2, the discrimination was two versus four, with half of the stimuli controlled for continuous quantities and half not controlled for continuous quantities. The subjects discriminated only the latter condition, indicating that they spontaneously used non-numerical information, as other vertebrates tested in similar experiments. In Experiments 3 and 4, cavefish trained from the beginning only with stimuli controlled for continuous quantities proved able to learn the discrimination of quantities based on the sole numerical information. However, their numerical acuity was lower than that reported in other teleost fish tested with visual stimuli.

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“…2006; Plaisier et al. 2009). The finding that subitizing occurs in touch is particularly interesting because it has been shown that parieto-frontal brain circuits dedicated to number processing partially overlap with those dedicated to hand and finger movements (Pinel et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grabbing subitizing with both hands: bimanual number processing

2010

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Visual judgment of small numerosities (<4) is generally assumed to be done through subitizing, which is a faster process than counting. Subitizing has also been shown to occur in haptic judgment of the number of spheres in the hand. Furthermore, interactions have been shown to exist between visually perceived numbers and hand motor action. In this study, we compare enumeration of a set of spheres presented to one hand (unimanual) and enumeration of the same total number of spheres presented divided over the two hands (bimanual). Our results show that, like in vision, a combination of subitizing and counting is used to process numbers in active touch. This shows that numbers are processed in a modality-independent way. This suggests that there are not only interactions between perception of numbers and hand motor action, but rather that number representation is modality-independent.

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One, two, three, many – Subitizing in active touch

Cited by 61 publications

References 41 publications

Subitizing in congenitally blind adults

Subitizing in congenitally blind adults

Non-visual numerical discrimination in a blind cavefish (Phreatichthys andruzzii)

Grabbing subitizing with both hands: bimanual number processing

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