Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow
Does language determine thought? Not according to a new study of maths skills in children who speak languages with few number words (press release).
The Australian study investigated the number skills of children from two indigenous communities that did not have words or gestures for numbers – a group of Warlpiri speakers in the Tanami Desert, north west of Alice Springs, and Anindilyakawa speakers from Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria – as well as a group of indigenous children from Melbourne who only spoke English.
The researchers used four tests: sharing pieces of play dough among three toy bears; remembering how many number of tokens, and putting out the same number of tokens; remembering how many tokens, and then another additional group of tokens, and putting out the total number of tokens; and matching the number of taps to the number of tokens.
In the paper to be published in PNAS, the authors say that it has been argued, based on research with adults who speak Amazonian languages with few number words, that we need counting words to understand exactly four, exactly five, etc. But this latest study contradicts this theory, as it found that, even without words for numbers, the children showed strong numeracy skills equal to their English-speaking counterparts.
“Methodological differences between this study and the Amazonian studies may account for the conflicting results. The adults in the Piraha study may not have understood the tasks, and in the Munduruku study subtraction was the only exact number task, and this operation is difficult for children 4 to 5 years of age” (paper).
The Telegraph quotes author Brian Butterworth, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, saying that this debate over how language moulds thought “will run and run”.
Coauthor Bob Reeve from Melbourne University’s School of Behaviourial Science told the Australian “Nobody is disputing the fact that you need language to build a more complicated set of ideas, but (language) isn’t the starter kit. There is a clear basis on which children can build, but it isn’t a linguistic basis.”