Steven Piantadosi, PhD
Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley

Three Surprising Things About Numbers
I'll present some recent work re-examining three key ideas about how number representations work. First, I'll present evidence against "two systems" accounts in which large and small numbers draw on distinct representational resources. I'll show that people's behavior is predicted by one system with bounded information processing capacity. Second, I'll present eye-tracking data which shows that people's number perception is not rapid and parallel, but rather relies on accumulation of information across saccades. These two results closely link number psychophysics to visual memory systems. Third, I’ll present an overview of cross-cultural work suggesting that the ways people represent large, exact number are based in culturally-contingent and constructed systems of representation, rather than biologically determined ones.

Faculty host, Ariel Starr: abstarr@uw.edu

This free lecture is made possible in part by endowments by Professors Allen L. Edwards and Roger B. Loucks.