Humans possess numerical abilities and have invented cultural tools to use them efficiently; but many other creatures, from insects to primates, have in the past decade been found to possess numerical abilities, possibly descended from a common ancestral form. Therefore, when we acquire numerical competence, for example in school, we build upon a specific inherited cognitive foundation.
Speaker abstracts and biographies are available below. Recorded audio of the presentations are also available below. A publication of this meeting is now available in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences.
This meeting was followed by a related satellite meeting 'The origins of numerical abilities: the future' at the Royal Society at Chicheley Hall on 22-23 February 2017.
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