Lezing van Stanislas De Haene

Stanislas de Haene is de winnaar van de 'Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science 2008'

The number sense hypothesis - One decade of research progress

Abstract
What are the origins of the human capacities for mathematics? In The Number Sense (1997), I proposed that, like many other animal species, we inherit from evolution a set of core conceptual systems which provide us with intuitions of number, space and time. Only our species, however, would exhibit a capacity for incremental cultural construction of symbols grounded on those core systems, based on the neuronal reconversion or “recycling” of evolutionary older brain territories. Ten years later, several lines of experimental evidence provide further support for this point of view. These results confirm that the initial number sense provides a foundation for mathematical intuition, predictive of future achievements in mathematics.