Conférence CRNL Véronique Izard "Perceptual foundations of geometry"

Abstract

Many findings concur to show that children possess intuitions about numeric quantities early on, and that these intuitions support the acquisition of number concepts in school. However, what about geometry, another major branch of mathematics? In this talk, I will present recent findings aiming to analyze the geometric content of visual form representations in infants, children and adults. I will first focus on Euclidean geometry, the so-called « natural » geometry. I will then broaden the scope to the geometries in Klein’s Erlangen program, which describe spatial figures at various levels of abstraction below and above Euclidean geometry.