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Math schemata and the origins of number representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2008

Susan Carey
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138scarey@wjh.harvard.edu

Abstract

The contrast Rips et al. draw between “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches to understanding the origin of the capacity for representing natural number is a false dichotomy. Its plausibility depends upon the sketchiness of the authors' own proposal. At least some of the proposals they characterize as bottom-up are worked-out versions of the very top-down position they advocate. Finally, they deny that the structures that these putative bottom-up proposals consider to be sources of natural number are even precursors of concepts of natural number. This denial depends upon an idiosyncratic, and mistaken, idea of what a precursor is.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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