Des doigts et des nombres

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In this literature review, we describe the state of the art of the scientific knowledge about the relationship between the use of fingers in numerical tasks and individuals’ performance in those tasks. One of the questions we want to answer is related with the universality of finger use in order to represent quantities on fingers or to achieve arithmetic calculations. In a first part of the paper, we report the results of studies highlighting the conscious and unconscious use of fingers in adults when they perform simple numerical tasks. In the second part of the manuscript, we adopt a more developmental point of view and our main question is whether finger use in children shapes their mental representations of numbers. In order to answer this question, we review the literature concerning the use of fingers for counting collection of objects through pointing, for representing quantities through finger rising and for calculating through finger manipulations. One crucial issue addressed in this part of the paper is the role of finger use for a possible transition between non-symbolic and symbolic number mental representations. In the last part of the paper, we discuss whether fingers are important, necessary or useless for the construction of numerical knowledge and conclude that, despite their possible influence on adults’ and children's behaviors and number understanding, they are not indispensable for developing accurate number mental representations. Finally, our review allows us to conclude that an innate view of the relationship between fingers and numbers is not fully supported in the literature and that a more functionalist view wherein fingers can support numerical acquisitions is more plausible.