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A Visual Sense of Number

Open access
Burr, David, Ross, John·2008·Current Biology

Abstract

Evidence exists for a nonverbal capacity for the apprehension of number, in humans [1] (including infants [2, 3]) and in other primates [4-6]. Here, we show that perceived numerosity is susceptible to adaptation, like primary visual properties of a scene, such as color, contrast, size, and speed. Apparent numerosity was decreased by adaptation to large numbers of dots and increased by adaptation to small numbers, the effect depending entirely on the numerosity of the adaptor, not on contrast, size, orientation, or pixel density, and occurring with very low adaptor contrasts. We suggest that the visual system has the capacity to estimate numerosity and that it is an independent primary visual property, not reducible to others like spatial frequency or density of texture [7].

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Research works printed but not linked: 20

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Metadata

Authors
Burr, D., & Ross, J.
Venue
Current Biology
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2008-03
Volume
18
Issue
6
Pages
425-428
ISSN
0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2001274155
Cited by
592
References
3
FWCI
11.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze
Licence

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Visual Sense of Number. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.052
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Burr, D., & Ross, J. (2008). A Visual Sense of Number. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.052

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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