期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2014
卷号：111
期号：13
页码：4809-4813
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1323628111
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：A rich concept of magnitude--in its numerical, spatial, and temporal forms--is a central foundation of mathematics, science, and technology, but the origins and developmental relations among the abstract concepts of number, space, and time are debated. Are the representations of these dimensions and their links tuned by extensive experience, or are they readily available from birth? Here, we show that, at the beginning of postnatal life, 0- to 3-d-old neonates reacted to a simultaneous increase (or decrease) in spatial extent and in duration or numerical quantity, but they did not react when the magnitudes varied in opposite directions. The findings provide evidence that representations of space, time, and number are systematically interrelated at the start of postnatal life, before acquisition of language and cultural metaphors, and before extensive experience with the natural correlations between these dimensions.
