Would genuinely love for someone to point out a reputable scientific paper that goes into this and actually draws some conclusive evidence.
Many human cognitive abilities are unconscious, like, in most cases, face recognition, so while I am not typically doing deliberate conscious mental math when distinguishing between my mother's face and my drinking buddy's face, it doesn't make sense to call it a "conditioned reflex" either, it seems to me. My brain is doing some sort of thought that I am not consciously aware of. That doesn't mean thought isn't happening.
I think they might have been thinking of a conditioned response, but then again you can't classically condition an animal to do something it's not already capable of. It's only the associations that are changed
The fact that they're showing different behavior in different circumstances shows some basic idea of quantity, and what is the expected quantity, and at least the difference between 1, 2, n-1, and indefinite quantity.