Can newborns differentiate auditorily presented small quantities?

Human infants are suggested to be born with a non-symbolic understanding of quantities. This innate ability is proposed to rely on two separate systems for numerosity discrimination: an approximate system for the representation of large (≥ 4) and a precise system for the representation of small (1–3) numerosities. However, these claims have been primarily deduced from studies in older infants, not newborns. Additionally, most of the studies have utilized behavioral designs and visual stimuli. Due to the importance of information regarding infants’ innate abilities for theories concerning the origins of numerical processing, more empirical evidence is needed in newborns. Here, we examined whether newborn babies can differentiate pre-attentively between auditorily presented small quantities 1-3.We measured EEG of 45 (so far, data collection ongoing) newborns 2-3 weeks after their due date during quantity-related auditory stimulation. Six stimuli (1-, 2- & 3-part sounds, amplitude change, frequency change, and shortening of silent gap between stimulus parts) were presented in multi-feature paradigm. The 2-part stimulus was a repeated standard stimulus, other stimuli were presented as rare deviant stimuli.We found that the brain responses of newborn babies to auditory stimuli representing the quantities 1 and 3 were significantly different from the responses to standard stimulus representing the quantity 2 especially at central and parietal areas.Based on these preliminary results it seems that newborns can differentiate small quantities presented auditorily. Therefore, our results would provide more support for the claim that number sense really would be innate and independent from sensor system.