- In studies published in 2003 and 2005, Lisa Feigenson of Johns Hopkins and Susan Carey of Harvard brought 12-to-14-month-old infants into a lab for a manual search task. The infants first watched as an experimenter placed one Ping-Pong ball at a time into a box. “Look at this!” the experimenter said. “What’s in my box?” The babies, who, thanks to the presence of a spiraling ball chute, were pretty motivated to retrieve the balls, subsequently reached into the box themselves to pull them out.
Except, this being an experiment, the box also had a hidden slit in the back. Thus, after depositing the balls, the experimenter could remove any number of them without the baby being any the wiser. The researchers were interested in whether an infant who had watched three balls enter the box, but could only retrieve two, would scour the box for a longer period of time than if he’d been able to retrieve all three. This would suggest he was able to mentally represent three individual objects.
Indeed, the babies did demonstrate increased scouring time (by about one to two seconds) in conditions where “balls entered” did not match “balls retrieved.” But this pattern of results only held when the experimenter deposited two or three Ping-Pong balls. When she deposited four, infants lost all expectations about how many balls would be in the box.
If that blows her mind then the Piraha people are going to put her into a coma: and Taken from here PDF. more information about the Piraha on wikipedia. Gordon describes a culture whose number words consist of approximately one, approximately two and many. The people who speak this language show poor discrimination between any numeric quantities larger than 3. The evidence comes from a culture named the Pirahã who live in Brazil but reject assimilation to the mainstream Brazilian culture.
The results reported by Gordon indicate that the Pirahã were generally accurate up to quantities of 2 or 3, but their performance deteriorated from 4 to 10. Even with a task where the participant was highly motivated, for example where there was a reward for remembering the difference between 3 and 4, the results were just at the chance level. It is noteworthy that performance for the larger numbers was not random; the answers increased as the overall number increased, suggesting that their answers were a rough approximate of the correct number.
Radiolab has a fantastic episode on numbers. At one point they talk specifically about an infants innate understanding of scales. The interesting thing is that newborns perceive numbers algorithmically first, rather than additive, which is to say that after the number three they will jump to the number nine as opposed to four. I think humans are genetically wired to sense larger distinctions of patterns once a collection grows beyond 2 or 3. It's fascinating how something like prime numbers, which now feels so logical and true and platonic, are just another guess at an approximating system.
Thanks, I know I am a bit late to the party but I recently started listening to Radiolab and it's a very cool program. I'll check it out. Any other favorites that standout to you?
That's exactly why I've started listening, for my "road trips". Thanks. Also, thanks sounds_sound, I'm about to listen to words now.
Words is the best one. Emergence and Colors are also good.
I've no idea how this might relate to the findings from the study but my nineteen month old baby has problems with the number four. She recently started counting up to ten. She will recite each number as she moves groups of like objects from one pile/container to another. She didn't count until about two weeks ago, she started counting with us then counting on her own over the last two weeks. She does a very good job, but has a hard time remembering the number four, jumping from three to five. I hypothesised that the game "give me five" by slapping hands might have given special importance to the number five, it seems to excite her a more then the other numbers, not that 'give me five' was a huge game with us.
\0 You realize we have daughters that are pretty much the same age? My daughter is 21 months. I've not noticed any hesitance to say "4" but I have noticed that she likes the number "5" and I'm guessing it's for the reason you outlined. She's been saying (singing) her ABC's (via the alphabet song) lately and it's funny because LMNOP is essentially one letter to her. I'm trying to teach her the separation. The other day she was really in to her own shadow. Watching a child figure that out is a pretty fun thing to witness. This is such a fun age that I can't stand to be at work for the fear that I'll miss something. edit: Counting to ten at 19 months is really great, especially if she's correlating the numbers to objects. Whatever you are doing, keep it up!
Me too. I was very excited that in one swoop I had figured out how to play both on my guitar for her.