Compressive mapping of number to space reflects dynamic encoding mechanisms, not static logarithmic transform

Significance The ability to map numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and mathematics. The mental “numberline” is an important predictor of math ability, thought to reflect an internal, native logarithmic representation of number, later becoming linearized by education. Here we demonstrate that the nonlinearity results not from a static logarithmic transformation but from dynamic processes that incorporate past history into numerosity judgments. We show strong and significant correlations between the response to the current trial and the magnitude of the previous stimuli and that subjects respond with a weighted average of current and recent stimuli, explaining completely the logarithmic-like nonlinearity. We suggest that this behavior reflects a general strategy akin to predictive coding to cope adaptively with environmental statistics. The mapping of number onto space is fundamental to measurement and mathematics. However, the mapping of young children, unschooled adults, and adults under attentional load shows strong compressive nonlinearities, thought to reflect intrinsic logarithmic encoding mechanisms, which are later “linearized” by education. Here we advance and test an alternative explanation: that the nonlinearity results from adaptive mechanisms incorporating the statistics of recent stimuli. This theory predicts that the response to the current trial should depend on the magnitude of the previous trial, whereas a static logarithmic nonlinearity predicts trialwise independence. We found a strong and highly significant relationship between numberline mapping of the current trial and the magnitude of the previous trial, in both adults and school children, with the current response influenced by up to 15% of the previous trial value. The dependency is sufficient to account for the shape of the numberline, without requiring logarithmic transform. We show that this dynamic strategy results in a reduction of reproduction error, and hence improvement in accuracy.

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