Stanislas Dehaene

Chaire Psychologie cognitive expérimentale

Année 2025-2026

Collège de France

Colloque : Seeing the Mind, Educating the Brain

Theme: Space, Time, and Number

The Perception and Understanding of Patterns and Graphics

Colloque - Lorenzo Ciccione : The Perception and Understanding of Patterns and Graphics

Lorenzo Ciccione

Résumé

Graphics are a cultural product, meaning that they are a human invention with defined rules and syntax. In this respect, they are very similar to written words and numbers, probably the two most famous cultural inventions. However, unlike them, graphics have been invented much more recently and they became widespread only in the last two centuries. Furthermore, graphicacy—the ability to read and understand graphics—has received little attention from cognitive psychology. In this talk, I will present some findings about the human ability to intuitively extract statistics and mathematical relations from graphical representations. Specifically, I will show that: graphics' intuitions are available early on in development, independently from formal education, and correlate with statistical and mathematical knowledge; judging the trends of noisy graphical displays recycles brain areas usually devoted to the detection of objects' orientation (in agreement with the neuronal recycling hypothesis) and also activates the brain network for mathematics; both children and adults can extrapolate non-linear mathematical patterns, with the notable exception of quadratic and exponential functions.