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My evopsych class in college touched on this. Brains can track a number of discrete objects (from 3 to ~7, depending on species and maturity). Once we get pas
by cwkoss 7y ago
My evopsych class in college touched on this.
Brains can track a number of discrete objects (from 3 to ~7, depending on species and maturity). Once we get past this number, brains tends to interpret it as 'many'. From the studies we looked at, it appears that the brain can innately count within this number, but reverts to 'many' representation after it.
Ex. crows can count three people going into an obscured area with food, and know that once three people have left, it's safe to get the food, as there aren't any people left.
- Razengan 7y agoWow, so language lets us get past that limit. And numbers are a computed property, so we don't have to know all the possible numbers, just the rules: let firstIndex = 0 var nextIndex: Number { return nextNumberBasedOnSomeRules() } And so it's helpful to have a language with a sensible numeric system, after all. :)
- cwkoss 7y agoA similarly interesting study: ability to create sentences using prepositional phrases, like "left of the red wall", predicts performance on a disoriented search task. https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/ashusterman/ConferencePosters_Public/Nav_SRCD2011_FINAL.pdf https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/ashusterman/ConferencePos...