Numerical Cognition: Debates and Disputes

Over the past few decades, researchers have sought to address an array of fundamental issues regarding the human capacity for numerical cognition. Does the human mind contain innate representations of numbers and numerical properties? Do our perceptual states represent number? How do children acquire number concepts in the first few years of life? How does natural language encode number? What impact do cultural products, such as numeral systems and counting procedures, exert on human cognition? Such issues have been the subject of intensive research in several disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and behavioral ecology. Yet the lines of communication between these fields have often been limited. Numerical Cognition: Debates & Disputes brings together thirty-two newly commissioned chapters by leading researchers from across these various fields. In doing so, it aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and to make insights from each of the contributing disciplines available to a broad academic audience.