<< Dehaene begins with the eye-opening discovery that animals - including
rats, pigeons, raccoons, and chimpanzees - can perform simple mathematical
calculations, and he describes ingenious experiments that show that human
infants also have a rudimentary number sense. >>
Some of latest and best of these experiments were performed recently at
Columbia by a former student of mine, Liz Brannon, and published in Science.
Her work includes some nice examples of her rigorous attempts to define
exactly what she meant by number and ordinality, since if the experiment were
not designed with great care, there would have been several other things to
which the rather rudimentary responses of rhesus monkeys (and later, human
infants) could have been responding.
Bill Everdell, Brooklyn