3 ms·
For what it's worth, the upper limit for subitization varies quite a bit. The neurotypical limit is usually four, but can be raised with practice. Children wit
by ooterness 3y ago
For what it's worth, the upper limit for subitization varies quite a bit.
The neurotypical limit is usually four, but can be raised with practice. Children with Down's Syndrome may not be able to subitize at all. Autistic savants can subitize up to thirty or more, with unconfirmed cases up to several hundred.
- mike_hock 3y agoMonkeys can fucking subitize double-digit numbers, which makes you question whether we are actually the smartest species on the planet.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoNo, it doesn’t. Why? No monkeys are discussing of subitization as a concept and how their species compares with others. Just because a kangaroo can jump higher than humans doesn’t mean it can go to the moon before humans. And, g factor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor Even savants can have low IQ.
- pixl97 3y agoEh, we're doing that smartest/most intelligent thing that always has lead to problems in human perception. An adult Chimpanzee can rip your arms off. Pretty much all it's muscles are fast twitch. Of course you're going to have far better dexterity than the chimp, because you have a much better balance of muscle fibers. That's the thing about intelligence, it's about generalization, not specific ability. A CPU can count to a billion in a second, nothing about that speed means it's 'smarter' than you. This is also why we're going to have to come up with new metrics on abilities as we develop more general intelligence software to see how and where said software differs from humans.
- bee_rider 3y agoHumans just “do it in software.”
- falsaberN1 3y agoIs it really four? Could have sworn it was five, since you got a "middle" to help managing the group or subgroup. At least I immediately bunch things in groups of five, so I always thought it was the correct one.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoIt's deffo 4 for me. I can see 4 in one shot, if it's say 5 or 6 or a bit higher I have to split the group and subitise each then sum them. YMMV and your mileage beats mine :)
- falsaberN1 3y agoHuh. Interesting. I thought it was one of those things like how we ended up with base 10 numbers because we have 5x2 fingers and that kinda stuff, but interesting to know I was off.
- Modified3019 3y agoI had a warehouse job for a while, essentially being my own independent mini-factory within a larger factory, cutting conduit and packaging things up for shipping out. Part of the job involved accurately counting hundreds or thousand of screws. I quickly found that visually grouping screws into groups of 4 on a large table was the fastest way to be 100% accurate. If I tried to do 5, sometimes I’d get a sort of confusion/uncertainty, not being quite clear if it was really 5, or 4 or 6, forcing me to check. I’d go on to group these little piles of 4, into larger groups of 4. So I got really good at counting in 4 and it’s multiples, 16, 64, 256. I can definitely see 4 being generally optimal, unless one can expect perfect visual ordering, which is possible with text, but rare in the real world.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoIf you are subgrouping isn't this just a heuristic that is so low latency that it feels instantaneous but actually involves a second operation?