Babies may have abstract numerical sense – US study

ByJoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Even before babies learn to talk
they have a bit of a grasp of math, according to new research
concluding that infants may have an abstract sense of numerical
concepts.

The research, published in this week’s edition of
“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” said
seven-month-old babies demonstrated an ability to match the
number of voices they heard to the number of faces they
expected to see.

The study of 20 infants by researchers at Duke University
was similar to a previous experiment done to demonstrate that
monkeys show numerical perception across senses.

In the new study, babies listened either to two women
simultaneously saying the word “look” or three women saying the
same word.

At the same time, the infants could choose between video
images of two or three women saying the word.

As they had found with the monkeys, the researchers said
the babies spent significantly more time looking at the video
image that matched the number of women talking.

“As a result of our experiments, we conclude that the
babies are showing an internal representation of ‘two-ness’ or
three-ness’ that is separate from sensory modalities and thus
reflects an abstract internal process,” researcher Elizabeth
Brannon wrote.

“These results support the idea that there is a shared
system between preverbal infants and nonverbal animals for
representing numbers,” she said.

“What we do know is that somehow, very quickly, they’ve
(the babies) acquired this ability to perceive number and
divorce it from the sensory information,” Brannon said.

Understanding the research could be useful in devising
methods for teaching basic math skills to the very young,
Brannon said.