Number skills are often reported anecdotally and in the mass media as a relative strength for individuals with autism, yet there are remarkably few research studies addressing this issue. This study, therefore, sought to examine autistic children's number estimation skills and whether variation in these skills can explain at least in part strengths and weaknesses in children's mathematical achievement. Thirty-two cognitively able children with autism (range 5 8-13 years) and 32 typical children of similar age and ability were administered a standardized test of mathematical achievement and two estimation tasks, one psychophysical nonsymbolic estimation (numerosity discrimination) task and one symbolic estimation (numberline) task. Children with autism performed worse than typical children on the numerosity task, on the numberline task, which required mapping numerical values onto space, and on the test of mathematical achievement. These findings question the widespread belief that mathematical skills are generally enhanced in autism. For both groups of children, variation in performance on the numberline task was also uniquely related to their academic achievement, over and above variation in intellectual ability; better number-to-space mapping skills went hand-in-hand with better arithmetic skills. Future research should further determine the extent and underlying causes of some autistic children's difficulties with regards to number. Autism Res

It has been suggested that the human ability to process number and time both rely on common magni-tude mechanisms, yet for time this commonality has mainly been investigated in the sub-second rather than longer time ranges. Here we examined whether number processing is associated with timing in time ranges greater than a second. Specifically,we tested longduration estimation abilities in adultswith a devel-opmental impairment in numerical processing (dyscalculia), reasoning that any such timing impairment co-occurring with dyscalculia may be consistent with joint mechanisms for time estimation and num-ber processing. Dyscalculics and age-matched controls were tested on supra-second temporal estimation (12 s), a difficulty-matched non-temporal control task, as well as mathematical abilities. Consistent with our hypothesis, dyscalculics were significantly impaired in supra-second duration estimation but not in the control task. Furthermore, supra-second timing ability positively correlated with mathematical profi-ciency. All participants reported that they used counting to estimate time, although no specific instructions were givenwith respect to counting. These results suggest that numerical processing and supra-second tem-poral estimation share common mechanisms. However, since this conclusion is also based on subjective observations, further work needs to be done to determine whether mathematical impairment co-occurs

edu Both time and numerosity can be represented continuously as analog properties whose discrimination conforms to Weber’s Law, suggesting that the two properties may be rep-resented similarly. Recent research suggests that the representation of time is influenced by the presence of emotional stimuli. If time and numerosity share a common cognitive representation, it follows that a similar relationship may exist between emotional stimuli and the representation of numerosity. Here, we provide evidence that emotional stimuli significantly affect humans ’ estimation of visual numerosity. During a numerical bisection task, enumeration of emotional stimuli (angry faces) was more accurate compared to enumeration of neutrally valenced stimuli (neutral faces), demonstrating that emotional stimuli affect humans ’ visual representation of numerosity as previously demonstrated for time. These results inform and broaden our understanding of the effect of negative emotional stimuli on psychophysical discriminations of quantity. Keywords:Weber’s Law, numerical cognition, emotion, quantitative discrimination, quantity