Babies do maths

[Guest guest]

This doesn't surprise me. Peter, at that age, used to make three

piles of clothes pegs, with the same amount in each pile.

 

Babies have a rudimentary grasp of maths long before they can walk or

talk, according to new research.

By the age of seven months infants have an abstract sense of numbers

and are able to match the number of voices they hear with the number

of faces they see.

The research could be useful in devising methods for teaching basic

maths skills to the very young, say researchers in the US.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences.

Look and listen

Adults can easily recognise the numerical equivalence between two

objects they see and two sounds they hear.

 

 

This is also the case for some animals, such as the monkey, but until

now there has been conflicting evidence about the ability of very

young human babies to do this.

Kerry Jordan and Elizabeth Brannon of Duke University, Durham, North

Carolina, played a video of two or three adult women strangers

simultaneously saying the word " look " to babies aged seven months.

The videos were displayed on two monitors positioned side by side as

the babies sat on a parent's lap. Audio tracks, synchronised with

both videos, were played through a hidden speaker.

On average, the infants spent a significantly greater proportion of

time looking at the display that matched the number of voices they

heard to the number of faces they saw.

" Our results demonstrate that by seven months of age, infants can

represent the equivalence between the number of voices they hear and

the number of faces they see, " the scientists wrote.

" The parallel between infants' and rhesus monkeys' performance on the

task is particularly striking. "

Numerical abilities

The research suggests that there is a shared system between infants

before they learn to talk and non-verbal animals for representing

numbers.

Understanding more about this system could be useful in devising

methods for teaching basic maths skills to the very young.

" The study asks important questions about numerical abilities in

infancy, " Dr Anna Franklin of the Surrey Baby Lab, Department of

Psychology, University of Surrey, UK, told the BBC News website.

" The findings support the argument that young infants are capable of

a wide range of mental operations and that infants are smarter than

we think. "