Sorry, this might be slightly off topic: there's a word for the ability to look at a small set of items are know how many are there without counting them, but I can't remember what it is and I can't find it on google. Can anyone tell me what this word is?
For instance, if you put a four apples in front of a very young child and ask how many there are, they will probably have to count them to tell you (especially if they are not in a "conventional" layout of four items). However, an older person has this ability and can immediately answer without counting them.
Subitizing. (Apparently there's a lower bound on characters in an answer - please excuse the parentheses.)