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General Science => Question of the Week => Topic started by: thedoc on 20/01/2009 17:30:41

Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: thedoc on 20/01/2009 17:30:41
Say you had three eggs on the table, by simply looking at them you can tell that there are three eggs (without counting one, two, three etc...). My question is, how many eggs or any other objects does there have to be until you have to start counting them?
Asked by Chemistry4me

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Title: How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: thedoc on 20/01/2009 17:30:41
We put this to Dr Roy Allen, School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen:
He’s talking about subitising and subitising is our apparent ability to instantly apprehend the quantity of a small group of objects without needing to consciously count each one individually. Unfortunately this is a research topic which has quite a heated debate about it. [img float=right]/forum/copies/RTEmagicC_Boulier1.JPG.jpg[/img]A lot of people argue that subitising as such doesn’t exist at all and that really is some form of fast counting which is conscious. It’s very difficult to research into subitising simply because you have to eliminate conscious counting. The only way to do that is to present stimuli very quickly, very short periods of time. Something like 50ms and then ask people to give their impression of the quantity of objects that they actually see. This particular person’s question is quite difficult to answer because as long as the objects are present for a long length of time there’s always the possibility that they might also be counting as well as subitising. The answer to the question is probably 3 or 4 in the true sense of subitising. We probably do this by some form of pattern recognition. There’s some correlation between quantity and particular shape. For example, a triangle – three objects is always a triangle or almost invariably a triangle; two objects always form the ends of a straight line.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: syhprum on 20/01/2009 19:28:03
Round about seven seems to be my after that I have to start counting them.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 20/01/2009 20:33:49
I have a suspicion the answer may be akin to how many quanta of information can be stored in short term memory. Most people can remember 7 items, numbers, letters, etc. However, items can be aggregated so that it appears we can store more.

If, for instance, you try to remember the numbers 0 1 2 5 9 7 1 6 8 2 1 you would probably struggle. But put in the form of a phone number - 01259 716821 - it becomes easier because you have aggregated the dialling code reducing the amount of discrete numbers from 11 to 7. It may be that we can instinctively tell when there are 7 items, but more than that would need to be counted or aggregated (i.e. seeing 2 groups of 4 items each).

I have seen no research on this subject so all this is just an educated guess (or, more accurately, a stab in the dark).
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 20/01/2009 23:37:09
I went to a kindergarden and asked the kids to count pens, I noticed that nearly every time they took three pens at once by just looking. For example, if I said that I wanted 12 pens, they'll take three, then another three, then another three etc... Obviously the number will change as we get older but I presume that for kids it will be around 3-4.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: dentstudent on 21/01/2009 08:15:17
The other method would be how many are recognisable in a line. If you can recognise 7 for example, then it follows that you can recognise 7 X 7, and therefore "know" that there are 49 without counting. It's a question of the spatial distribution of the items that need counting.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: chris on 21/01/2009 09:15:02
Is it just that with small numbers of objects you could them so quickly that you don't notice yourself doing it; larger numbers of objects take longer to count and hence are more likely to reach consciousness?

Chris
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: BenV on 21/01/2009 09:23:09
I wonder if there's a tie in with learning to count in the first place?  You can't instinctively know that there are 6 items until you have learned to count to six, so even if you can instinctively know the size of a small group, must you go through the process of mentally marking how many according to the numbers you have learned, in other words, counting them?
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: dentstudent on 21/01/2009 09:29:24
I wonder if there's a tie in with learning to count in the first place?  You can't instinctively know that there are 6 items until you have learned to count to six, so even if you can instinctively know the size of a small group, must you go through the process of mentally marking how many according to the numbers you have learned, in other words, counting them?

Ben, I'm not sure that I agree with that statement. My eldest boy "knows" that there are 5 fingers on a hand without having to count to 5. Perhaps there are 2 "learning to count" methods - the first being the incremental 1,2,3,4..., the second being "people (generally) have 5 fingers per hand, so two hands are 10". I'm sure that there is a great deal of cross-over between the two methods, and that we perhaps teach counting using both without realising, but I'm not sure that you have to be able to count incrementally to be able to determine how many "fingers"  there are. Of course, this method is not without it's short-comings. There are people with fewer and more fingers than 5.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: dentstudent on 21/01/2009 09:55:22
But I can see that you would need to know how many hands you were holding up. But then you can also learn that (most) people have 2 hands....

Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Raghavendra on 21/01/2009 11:36:35
i have the answer

  "It should not be small nor greater.. If it is visible it can be counted until and unless our eye is visible. Directly"

Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 21/01/2009 11:41:33
Sorry, what was that? [???] You have the answer? [:-\] I don't think you've understood the question raghavendra   [:-\]
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 23/01/2009 21:38:44
I went to a kindergarden and asked the kids to count pens, I noticed that nearly every time they took three pens at once by just looking. For example, if I said that I wanted 12 pens, they'll take three, then another three, then another three etc... Obviously the number will change as we get older but I presume that for kids it will be around 3-4.

The other method would be how many are recognisable in a line. If you can recognise 7 for example, then it follows that you can recognise 7 X 7, and therefore "know" that there are 49 without counting. It's a question of the spatial distribution of the items that need counting.

Examples of aggregation.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: RD on 24/01/2009 14:12:28
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/neurobotics/smart/115.asp
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 24/01/2009 14:19:02
I got 2 spot on (no pun intended) & a total of 5 within 5 which, apparently, makes me better than anyone in the experiment.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: RD on 24/01/2009 14:27:47
You're in savant league Dr B...

Quote
two savant twins to instantaneously count matches spilled on the floor (one said "111"; the other said "37, 37, 37").
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/feb/featsavant/
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: RD on 24/01/2009 14:47:07
Either I'm getting in touch with my inner savant ...

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

or I'm getting better with practice.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/neurobotics/smart/115.asp
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 24/01/2009 14:56:49
Either I'm getting in touch with my inner savant ...

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

or I'm getting better with practice.

(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbestsmileys.com%2Fclapping%2F2.gif&hash=f3ac90d0f104dd89dbe260c598e013a8)

I think it's a case of getting used to how crowded the area is.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 25/01/2009 01:27:40
Yes, that was quite tricky! [???] [???]
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: RD on 25/01/2009 07:45:23
.
 [ Invalid Attachment ]





Yes I cheated on this test.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 25/01/2009 07:58:25
How? You took photos and then went back and counted them?

I saw that!
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 25/01/2009 08:37:08
Come on! Spill the beans!
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: RD on 25/01/2009 09:38:49
How? You took photos and then went back and counted them?

No counting necessary, just forgery.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 25/01/2009 12:31:08
How? You took photos and then went back and counted them?

No counting necessary, just forgery.

An example of lateral thinking  [;D]
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: amaterasu on 25/01/2009 14:51:06
many birds seem to possess such a number sense, too.
i've read that they can somehow distinguish 2 from 3.  for instance, if a nest contains 4 eggs and 1 of them could be taken safely, but when 2 are removed the bird generally deserts the nest.

our number sense isn't all that great either, actually.
interestingly, cardinal number implies no counting.  you need a number system to create a counting process and only humans seem to be capable of doing so.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: RD on 26/01/2009 05:39:26
many birds seem to possess such a number sense, too.
i've read that they can somehow distinguish 2 from 3.  for instance, if a nest contains 4 eggs and 1 of them could be taken safely, but when 2 are removed the bird generally deserts the nest.


a cuckoo will remove an egg from a nest before adding its egg, so presumably the host bird can notice an addition.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 27/01/2009 01:41:20
I think it's a case of getting used to how crowded the area is.
I've tried this 5 times, sometimes I am a long way off but other times I am right on the dot, am I meant to be getting fluctuating results like these?
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: DoctorBeaver on 27/01/2009 23:37:41
I would have thought your guesses would get better
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 27/01/2009 23:51:15
Well...um...[:I][:I]
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: SETF on 03/02/2009 23:30:40
hey guys...i listened to the podcast where i gathered our brains take apart various sections of the items in the form of shapes like triangles, and we attempt to count them from there.

What i want to know is that in the days of medieval war or even now perhaps, when the look out/ leader spies the advancing enemy from a distance, they were able to work out how many ranks, and a number estimate of how many soldiers there were...was it this same method used or were they 'smarter' and thus more quite capable of such a feat?
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 04/02/2009 00:07:58
They probably would have had more time that 50ms, so they can 'count' or do some multiplication/calculations, e.g 25 x 20 etc...
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: erickejah on 13/02/2009 02:02:59
~2 out of 5. [V]
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 13/02/2009 02:25:04
What is 2 out of five? Did you mean the test?
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: wannabe on 27/02/2009 12:48:54
Interesting discussion!
One thing not being brought to the fore is the Innate counting thing.
Counting is a learned thing! When counting is irrelevant in a "PRIMITIVE" culture, things about counting suddenly seem very different then in societies of "WEIRD" (Western Educated  Industrialized Rich Democratic.....as  termed by anthropologist Joe Henrich) people.
 To illustrate I copy below an excerpt from the 12 february 2009 Nature Journal to illustrate:

From the article:
Darwin 200: Human nature: the remix

Dan Jones

There is evidence that humans have not just one innate number system, but two. The 'analogue estimation' system evaluates quantities in an approximate manner by relating them to imprecise notions such as 'amount of stuff' or 'extent of imaginary line'. The second system is more exact, but can initially, and innately, keep track of only three or four items11.

The exact number system can handle larger numbers, but this requires cultural learning and elaboration (the analogue system seems to function in much the same way across cultures). Some societies, such as the Pirahã; of the Amazon, have little need for large exact numbers (they do not trade or keep accounts), and use only 'one', 'two' and 'many'. The Pirahã also perform poorly at lining up groups of three or more objects (nine nuts, say, with nine batteries), or estimating when the last of 15 beans has been removed from a tin. Without the cultural demand for trading in large numbers, they have neither developed the concept nor invented the words12.

Cross-cultural studies also suggest that a basic grasp of geometric concepts, such as points, lines and parallelism, is a universal component of human cognition, or at least found in disparate cultures13. A similar story holds for how people relate numbers to space, but with an interesting twist. Western adults tend to order clusters of dots (grouped in 10, 100 and 1,000), along a linear scale, so that the distance between the group of 10 and 100 is much smaller than the gap between 100 and 1,000. Western infants, by contrast, group numbers on a logarithmic scale, with the gap between 100 and 1000 the same as that between 10 and 100. Cross-cultural studies among the indigenous Amazonian Mundurucú revealed that both children and adults order numbers logarithmically. Together with the results from Western infants, this suggests that the logarithmic system could be an innate and universal aspect of mathematical thinking, one that gets tweaked in Western populations through formal education in certain mathematical tools and techniques to produce a switch to the linear system14.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 27/02/2009 23:06:45
Thanks for that wannabe [:)]
The last paragraph was quite interesting.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: erickejah on 08/03/2009 22:45:27
yep
What is 2 out of five? Did you mean the test?
yep
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: yor_on on 17/03/2009 00:56:13
I went to a kindergarden and asked the kids to count pens, I noticed that nearly every time they took three pens at once by just looking. For example, if I said that I wanted 12 pens, they'll take three, then another three, then another three etc... Obviously the number will change as we get older but I presume that for kids it will be around 3-4.

Yep, up to three seems to be normal with people that don't have mathematics. "The Hadza people, hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, for example, have words only for "one," "two," and "three"; anything more is "many." And I've heard/read that about other tribes too before. And Animals seems to be able to count too, just as amaterasu tells.
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/03.14/01-thinking.html
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Chemistry4me on 17/03/2009 08:12:34
I went to a kindergarden and asked the kids to count pens, I noticed that nearly every time they took three pens at once by just looking. For example, if I said that I wanted 12 pens, they'll take three, then another three, then another three etc... Obviously the number will change as we get older but I presume that for kids it will be around 3-4.
Aye? What is this for?
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: yor_on on 17/03/2009 10:30:20
Me being crosseyed?

Swear to I didn't see that.
Aliens?

Sh* I'm gonna get abduct...


---------

I'll take it away..
Now nobody will know...

Am I clever or what.
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: Gregorian on 24/03/2009 03:57:31
.
 [ Invalid Attachment ]





Yes I cheated on this test.

loool.. I didn't see that "Yes I cheated on this test" at first ..
Title: QotW - 09.01.25 - How many objects can you instinctively count?
Post by: gurpal on 22/07/2009 15:23:23
get out of here
Either I'm getting in touch with my inner savant ...

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

or I'm getting better with practice.

(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbestsmileys.com%2Fclapping%2F2.gif&hash=f3ac90d0f104dd89dbe260c598e013a8)

I think it's a case of getting used to how crowded the area is.
Title: None
Post by: locksleyu on 06/05/2015 03:11:20
Genius Dot Test is a simple iPad application that tests your ability to quickly estimate large numbers of objects. It uses three different skill levels (the highest goes up to 1000 objects), and tracks your progress over time.

It's on iTunes if you are interested:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genius-dot-test/id988222365?mt=8