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Quinian bootstrapping or Fodorian combination? Core and constructed knowledge of number

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2011

Elizabeth S. Spelke
Elizabeth S. Spelke
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. spelke@wjh.harvard.edu
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Abstract

According to Carey (2009), humans construct new concepts by abstracting structural relations among sets of partly unspecified symbols, and then analogically mapping those symbol structures onto the target domain. Using the development of integer concepts as an example, I give reasons to doubt this account and to consider other ways in which language and symbol learning foster conceptual development.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , June 2011 , pp. 149 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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