4 ms·
I'm reminded of that scene in Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman's character instantly counts exactly how many toothpicks a waitress drops. No idea how realistic tha
by lanius 9y ago
I'm reminded of that scene in Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman's character instantly counts exactly how many toothpicks a waitress drops. No idea how realistic that was, but perhaps some humans are able to use those circuits dedicated toward counting that have long gone dormant in our species.
- bckygldstn 9y agoI blanking on keywords/sources right now, but I remember learning about this in college. The gist was that we have have on O(1) counting system for small numbers and an O(n) system for larger numbers. It takes the same amount of time to count 3 apples as 5 apples cause you can just instantly perceive that magnitude. But it takes about twice as long to count 40 widgits than 20, cause you have to look at each one individually. It seams reasonably that the threshold for the two systems would vary in different individuals.
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoKeyword: Subitizing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing In Rain Man, Raymond sees three groups of 82 toothpicks instantly. The waitress recognizes instantly that there are 4 toothpicks remaining - that's a much easier number to see instantly. I believe that the ordinary maximum that people subitize is 4. I can believe that the threshold may vary between a normal 3-5 up to something as high as 10. And when playing fast-paced card games with friends, I think that my range is much lower and theirs may be much higher! But 82 is just unbelievable.
- pluma 9y agoHe's portrayed as an autistic savant, so I don't find it entirely implausible. There are documented cases of autists showing extremely impressive performances in arithemetic and memorisation, so why not subitizing too?
- dorfsmay 9y ago"Laurence Kim Peek (November 11, 1951 – December 19, 2009) was an American savant. Known as a "megasavant", he had an exceptional memory, but he also experienced social difficulties, possibly resulting from a developmental disability related to congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the autistic savant character Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek
- maxxxxx 9y agoI wonder if you can train yourself for higher numbers.
- Raphmedia 9y agoIt is pretty eerie to see a reference to Aleister Crowley in a Wikipedia article that is not related to the occult.
- pluma 9y agoI remember having learned that the maximum is somewhere around 7 for the average person. So most people will easily recognise 1-5 apples, find it slightly harder to recognise 6 and beyond 7 they most likely have to count or split them into smaller groups.