Scientist says numeracy theories don't add up

From: Mike Girouard (foggytown_at_aol.com)
Date: 08/20/04 

Date: 20 Aug 2004 01:46:14 -0700

Scientist says numeracy theories don't add up
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Daily Telegraph)
(Filed: 20/08/2004)

Language moulds our thoughts so much that we cannot conceptualise
ideas for which we do not have words, according to an American
researcher.

Dr Peter Gordon of Columbia University, New York, studied an Amazonian
tribe whose language has no word for numbers beyond two. His research
on the Piraha, a tribe of hunter-gatherers, sheds light on
mathematical thought.

Dr Gordon's work, reported in the journal Nature, shows that the
ability of tribal adults to conceptualise numbers is no better than
that of infants or even some animals.

The tribe has words for "one" and "two" - and "one" can also mean
"roughly one" - but anything more than that is not quantified but
merely lumped together as "many". The research suggests that without
words for specific numbers, numeration cannot develop.

The Piraha have little social structure, no art, and they barter
instead of using currency. Their language is limited to just 10
consonants and vowels.

Dr Gordon, whose wife Keren spent 20 years with the tribe, conducted
his research while visiting the Amazon 10 years ago with Dr Daniel
Everett, a linguist who is now at the University of Manchester.

Asked to duplicate a row of up to 10 objects placed on a desk, Dr
Gordon found that the ability of tribesmen to do so faltered beyond
two or three. This was also the case when they were asked to copy up
to 10 lines drawn on paper. In other tests it was shown that the
people lacked the ability to remember specific numbers.

Dr Gordon says that his research casts doubt on claims by linguists
that people have an innate numerical sense. He says that the ability
to perceive specific numbers is innate only up to three.

Dr Gordon's work supports findings made in the 1930s by Benjamin Lee
Whorf, a linguist who argued that language can determine the nature
and content of thought. "Whether one language chooses to distinguish
one thing versus another affects how an individual perceives reality,"
Dr Gordon said.

Dr Lisa Feigenson, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Maryland, said that Dr Gordon's study was "fantastic". She
said that language must be causing the "drastic" difference in the
number sense of the Piraha.

Prof Brian Butterworth, of University College London, said that Dr
Gordon's pioneering work had produced evidence that we needed
"counting words" in order to have concepts of numbers beyond three.

"That is, we can have a sense of threeness without having a word for
three, but we cannot have a sense of fourness and beyond without the
words to express it," Prof Butterworth said.

"This does seem surprising, however, since English-speaking children
of three or four years old, who can use only the words one and two
accurately in counting, can match and compare sets of objects up to
six or seven."

With compliments to the group,

FoggyTown

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