Numerical cognition

2018 Spring

Dates: 23 February, 9 March, 20 April, 18 May 9:00-16:00

Room: Károli Gáspár University, 1037 Budapest, Bécsi út 324. V. build., room 304

The aim of the course is to give an introduction to the numerical cognition research area. On one hand, the course covers many aspects of the numerical cognition basic research: numerical cognition in healthy adults, development of mathematical abilities, neuroscientific background of those abilities, number understanding in animals, etc. On the other hand, the course discusses several applied aspects, such as educational programs, diagnosis and remedy of developmental dyscalculia, measurement of acquired numerical impairments, etc.

Topics

Demonstration of some numerical phenomena

Basic numerical representations

• • Analog Magnitude System

  • The role of verbal representation

  • Discrete Semantic System

  • Object quantification

Development and impairment of numerical abilities

• • Numerical abilities in infants

  • Numerical abilities in preschoolers

  • Impairment of numerical abilities and dyscalculia

The role of the number notation in number processing

• • Cultural history of number notations

  • Typology of number notations

  • The role of number notations in number processing

Readings

Dehaene, S. (1997). The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Some Hungarian readings on a previous description of this course.

Optionally, see information on our lab's web page.

Requirements

• • Choose one of the following option (we'll discuss the chosen options on 9 March 20 April, deadline is 11 May)

    • Wikipedia article in numerical cognition, minimum 8000 characters (with spaces). (See some help in Hungarian.)

    • Running a numerical experiment. The plans will be discussed before collecting the data.

    • Detailed commentary for one of our manuscript in preparation.

    • Read 3 papers in a specific subtopic published in the recent 2 years, and summarize them in an essay.

Slides

Some of the slides are in Hungarian. Translation is in progress.

Introduction

Bases of numerical cognition

The development and impairment of numerical cognition

The role of the number notation in numerical abilities