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Infants discriminate number: Evidence against the prerequisite of visual object individuation and the primacy of continuous magnitude

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2017

Melissa E. Libertus ,
Emily J. Braham  and
Ruizhe Liu
Melissa E. Libertus
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology & Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 libertus@pitt.edu ejb67@pitt.edu rul23@pitt.edu http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/kitlab/
Emily J. Braham
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology & Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 libertus@pitt.edu ejb67@pitt.edu rul23@pitt.edu http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/kitlab/
Ruizhe Liu
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology & Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 libertus@pitt.edu ejb67@pitt.edu rul23@pitt.edu http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/kitlab/
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Abstract

Leibovich et al. hypothesize that the absence of visual object individuation limits infants' numerical skills and necessitates a reliance on continuous magnitudes. We argue that parallels between infants' numerical discrimination in the visual and auditory modalities, their abilities to match numerosities across modalities, and their greater ability to discriminate changes in number compared with continuous magnitudes contradict the authors' assumptions.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e176
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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