Intuitions for Multiplication in Amazonian Adults and in U.S. Adults and Children
Résumé
Success at non-symbolic addition and subtraction has been documented
with diverse populations: preschool children, occidental adults (in conditions
preventing counting), and also an indigene group from the Amazon, the
Mundurucu, who speak a language with a restricted number lexicon (Barth et al.,
2005; Pica et al., 2004). In all these populations, performance shows a
characteristic ratio effect: the sums and differences that participants estimate are
approximate, and the range of uncertainty increases for larger numbers.
Studies of brain-damaged patients (Lemer et al, 2003), brain imaging (Dehaene et
al., 2003), or task interference (Lee & Kang, 2002) suggest that multiplication
and division, on the contrary, may be mediated by language and rotelearned
tables. Nevertheless, the existence of a universal capacity for
nonsymbolic multiplication has not been investigated directly.
Here, we investigated whether multiplication is part of humans’ universal
knowledge about numbers. We presented computer animations illustrating nonsymbolic
multiplication problems to three different populations: US adults,
Amazonian Adults, and US children at two ages, before and during the first years
oflearning multiplication (respectively Preschool-1st grade, and 3rd-5th grade).
Domaines
PsychologieOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
---|