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1 results

  • Chapter 13 - The Biology of Iconic Dimensions and Magnitudes

  • from Part III - Iconic Dimensions and Magnitudes: The Conformation System of Authority Ranking
  • Alan Page Fiske, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book:
    Representing Relationships
    Published online:
    21 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025, pp 282-292

  • Summary

    Without counting, adult and infant humans and many other animals are able to compare amounts of solids, intensities of stimuli, and quantities of discrete objects or stimuli – if the sizes of the sets being compared differ by a large enough ratio. For example, an infant of a given age might be able to identify the larger of two sets, where one set consists of forty items and the other set ten items, so a ratio of 4:1. The same infant might not be able to recognize which was larger, a set of 10 items and a set of 5. The cognitive system that makes these > or < discriminations is called the analog magnitude system, or the approximate magnitude system (AMS). The principle neuropsychological substrate of this system is in the lateral segment of the intraparietal sulcus. This same region is activated when people compare social ranks.