From BBC:
Humans have an in-built ability to do mathematics even if they do not have the language to express it, a research team has suggested.
A study in Australian Aboriginal children, whose languages lack number words, found they did just as well as English-speaking children in numeracy.
The findings contradicts other research which found having “counting words” was the key to developing number skills.
The study appears in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.
British and Australian researchers assessed 45 indigenous Australian children aged between four and seven years.
They compared those who lived in remote areas and only spoke Warlpiri or Anindilyakawa – two Aboriginal languages with very few number words – with those who lived in Melbourne and spoke English.
Number tasks
The children were asked to “copy” the number of objects the researchers placed on a mat.
They then had to repeat the exercise when objects were added under a cover – so they could not see how many objects were now there but had to work it out.
In the most complex task, the children had to match the right number of counters to the number of times the researcher banged two sticks together.
There was no difference in numerical ability between the children who spoke languages without number words and the English-speaking children.
Study leader Professor Brian Butterworth, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said two studies in tribes in the Amazon had concluded that words were necessary for exact number tasks but this research showed otherwise.
“We’re born with the ability to see the world numerically just as we’re born to see the world in colour.”
He added that some people may be born without this innate numeracy mechanism – for example those with dyscalculia who struggle to develop number skills.
“This may help explain why children in numerate cultures with developmental dyscalculia find it so difficult to learn arithmetic.
“Although they have plenty of formal and informal opportunities to learn to count with words and do arithmetic, the innate mechanism on which skilled arithmetic is based may have developed atypically,” he said.
Professor Butterworth is currently conducting a large twin study to shed light on the differences in brains of people with dyscalculia.
Australian aboriginal children are known (from previous studies) to have superior geo-spatial memories and geo-spatial reasoning and navigation skills to non-Aboriginal Australian children. One speculation has been that these skills arose from requirements of traditional aboriginal societies to hunt and track animals, and then to return home with minimum effort.
By: peter on August 19, 2008
at 7:49 pm
[...] August 20, 2008 by Alexandre Borovik I discovered two posts on Butterworth’ discalculia theories (related to my previous post): [...]
By: Dislexia, discalculia, tone deafness « Mathematics under the Microscope on August 20, 2008
at 10:36 am
More on the same:
We are natural born mathematicians .
With thanks to Owl.
By: Alexandre Borovik on August 20, 2008
at 9:15 pm
My friend, who is a Linguistics PhD, gave me a simple argument why the lack of certain forms in the language does not indicate anything about the society which uses that language. The Chinese does not have a past tense!
By: Torus on August 23, 2008
at 11:54 pm
Could it be that cultures based on languages without past tense are more sensitive to tradition and authority? “Confucius says” sounds stronger than “Confucius said”.
By: Alexandre Borovik on August 24, 2008
at 12:51 am