Children understand the concept of number size through innate approximate number systems
Evidence largely supports the idea that children and infants possess an early, intuitive approximate number system that helps them understand numerical magnitude and size, though researchers debate the extent to which non-numerical visual cues influence these early tasks.
The retrieved literature consistently points to an early-emerging or innate approximate number system (ANS) that governs how humans and animals process numerical magnitude and ratios. While some studies (e.g., paper 3) highlight confounding continuous visual properties and inhibitory control factors in preschool dot-comparison tasks, the overarching body of developmental and cognitive work supports the foundational role of the ANS in numerical cognition.
S. Piantadosi. A rational analysis of the approximate number system. 2016. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0963-8
Paper 0 derives the logarithmic mapping of the approximate number system, showing how innate magnitude estimation naturally scales with numerical size.
Cristina Rodríguez, Roberto A. Ferreira. To what extent is dot comparison an appropriate measure of approximate number system?. 2023. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1065600
Paper 3 cautions that preschool performance on standard approximate number system tasks is heavily influenced by continuous visual properties and inhibitory control, complicating simple interpretations of numerical size understanding.
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Chuyan Qu, Sam Clarke, Francesca Luzzi, Elizabeth M. Brannon. Rational number representation by the approximate number system.. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105839
Paper 2 demonstrates that young children and adults rely on the approximate number system to evaluate numerical ratios and representations.
Arioli M, Silvestri V, Petrelli A, Morniroli D, Giannì ML, Bulf H, Macchi Cassia V. Newborns' Asymmetrical Processing of Order From Sequentially Presented Magnitudes.. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.70025
Paper 5 shows that infants extract ordinal and magnitude information early in development, pointing toward continuous continuity in magnitude representation.
Ying Yang, Olivier Collignon. The number sense: likely innate, surely not visual. <i>A commentary on “Is there an innate sense of number in the brain?”</i>. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaf207
Paper 10 supports the view of an innate, modality-independent number sense underlying quantity perception.
Gwangsu Kim, Jaeson Jang, Seungdae Baek, Min Song, Se-Bum Paik. Spontaneous generation of innate number sense in untrained deep neural networks. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/857482
Paper 11 demonstrates that number-tuned neurons obeying psychophysical scaling laws can arise spontaneously in untrained systems, supporting an innate foundation for number sense.
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