Fingers as a Tool for Counting – Naturally Fixed or Culturally Flexible?

IntroductIon Like number words and written numerals, fingers can be used to represent numbers. In fact, due to their ubiquitous availability, agility, and discrete quantity, they are considered the most natural tool for counting, which renders them attractive for theories of embodied (numerical) cognition (Andres et al., 2008; Di Luca and Pesenti, 2011). As they are so closely linked to the human body, finger counting sequences may appear to be universal, but both their composition (Bender and Beller, in preparation) and their existence (Butterworth et al., 2011; Crollen et al., 2011) depend on culture. In this paper we will argue that it is crucial for any (embodied) theory of numerical cognition to take this cultural variability into account. To substantiate this claim, we depict some of the cultural variability in finger counting, followed by a brief representational analysis, from which directions for future research will be derived.