It is popular in psychology to hypothesize that representations of exact number are innately determined—in particular, that biology has endowed humans with a system for manipulating quantities which forms the primary representational substrate for our numerical and mathematical concepts. While this perspective has been important for advancing empirical work in animal and child cognition, here we examine six natural predictions of strong numerical nativism from a multidisciplinary perspective, and find each to be at odds with evidence from anthropology and developmental science. In particular, the history of number reveals characteristics that are inconsistent with biological determinism of numerical concepts, including a lack of number systems across some human groups and remarkable variability in the form of numerical systems that do emerge. Instead, this literature highlights the importance of economic and social factors in constructing fundamentally new cognitive systems to achieve culturally specific goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

中文翻译：

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象征数字的文化起源。


心理学中流行的假设是，精确数字的表示是天生决定的，特别是生物学赋予人类一种操纵数量的系统，该系统构成了我们数字和数学概念的主要表示基础。虽然这一观点对于推进动物和儿童认知方面的实证研究非常重要，但在这里，我们从多学科的角度研究了强烈的数字先天论的六种自然预测，并发现每一种预测都与人类学和发展科学的证据相矛盾。特别是，数字的历史揭示了与数字概念的生物决定论不一致的特征，包括某些人类群体缺乏数字系统以及确实出现的数字系统形式的显着变化。相反，该文献强调了经济和社会因素在构建全新认知系统以实现文化特定目标方面的重要性。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）