A joint British and Australian study has challenged the notion that knowledge of a language that depicts numbers is necessary for numeracy skills.Research carried out on Australian Aboriginal children from two remote communities, with restricted words or gestures for numbers, and comparing them with English-speaking Aboriginal children, found no difference in numerical ability.The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, was led by the University College London (UCL) and the University of Melbourne and challenges previous studies which found "counting words" were necessary to develop number skills. It considers that humans have an innate ability for mathematics, even though they may not be able to express it in words."Recently, an extreme form of linguistic determinism has been revived which claims that counting words are needed for children to develop concepts of numbers above three," said Professor Brian Butterworth from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, one of the study's lead authors. "That is, to possess the concept of ‘five’ you need a word for five.""Evidence from children in numerate societies, but also from Amazonian adults whose language does not contain counting words, has been used to support this claim. However, our study of aboriginal children suggests that we have an innate system for recognizing and representing numerosities – the number of objects in a set – and that the lack of a number vocabulary should not prevent us from doing numerical tasks that do not require number words," he said.The University of Melbourne’s School of Behavioural Science's Associate Professor Bob Reeve, who was a study co-author, said the research had strong implications for the way maths is taught, not just to Aboriginal children but to children of all cultures. He said it could also contribute to a better understanding of why some children struggle with basic numeracy skills."This study shows that number abilities are not simply based on culture or language,’’ said Reeve. “Our findings are consistent with the idea that we have an innate system for representing quantity ideas and that the lack of number words in a language should not prevent us from completing simple number and computation tasks."Reeve also said the research carried out on the Aboriginal children from the remote communities showed indigenous children had a strong capacity for numbers, saying:
Img: Aboriginal rock painting, Kakadu, Aust. Credit: Thomas Schoch
"We need to investigate ways in which we can add on to these building blocks to develop ways of teaching numeracy that are relevant to Indigenous students culture."
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