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Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group
Children in industrialized cultures typically succeed on Give-N, a test of counting ability, by age 4. On the other hand, counting appears to be learned much later in the Tsimane’, an indigenous group in the Bolivian Amazon. This study tests three hypotheses for what may cause this difference in tim...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342773/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35913931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270739 |
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author | Boni, Isabelle Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sackstein, Sophie Piantadosi, Steven T. |
author_facet | Boni, Isabelle Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sackstein, Sophie Piantadosi, Steven T. |
author_sort | Boni, Isabelle |
collection | PubMed |
description | Children in industrialized cultures typically succeed on Give-N, a test of counting ability, by age 4. On the other hand, counting appears to be learned much later in the Tsimane’, an indigenous group in the Bolivian Amazon. This study tests three hypotheses for what may cause this difference in timing: (a) Tsimane’ children may be shy in providing behavioral responses to number tasks, (b) Tsimane’ children may not memorize the verbal list of number words early in acquisition, and/or (c) home environments may not support mathematical learning in the same way as in US samples, leading Tsimane’ children to primarily acquire mathematics through formalized schooling. Our results suggest that most of our subjects are not inhibited by shyness in responding to experimental tasks. We also find that Tsimane’ children (N = 100, ages 4-11) learn the verbal list later than US children, but even upon acquiring this list, still take time to pass Give-N tasks. We find that performance in counting varies across tasks and is related to formal schooling. These results highlight the importance of formal education, including instruction in the count list, in learning the meanings of the number words. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9342773 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93427732022-08-02 Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group Boni, Isabelle Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sackstein, Sophie Piantadosi, Steven T. PLoS One Research Article Children in industrialized cultures typically succeed on Give-N, a test of counting ability, by age 4. On the other hand, counting appears to be learned much later in the Tsimane’, an indigenous group in the Bolivian Amazon. This study tests three hypotheses for what may cause this difference in timing: (a) Tsimane’ children may be shy in providing behavioral responses to number tasks, (b) Tsimane’ children may not memorize the verbal list of number words early in acquisition, and/or (c) home environments may not support mathematical learning in the same way as in US samples, leading Tsimane’ children to primarily acquire mathematics through formalized schooling. Our results suggest that most of our subjects are not inhibited by shyness in responding to experimental tasks. We also find that Tsimane’ children (N = 100, ages 4-11) learn the verbal list later than US children, but even upon acquiring this list, still take time to pass Give-N tasks. We find that performance in counting varies across tasks and is related to formal schooling. These results highlight the importance of formal education, including instruction in the count list, in learning the meanings of the number words. Public Library of Science 2022-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9342773/ /pubmed/35913931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270739 Text en © 2022 Boni et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Boni, Isabelle Jara-Ettinger, Julian Sackstein, Sophie Piantadosi, Steven T. Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group |
title | Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group |
title_full | Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group |
title_fullStr | Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group |
title_full_unstemmed | Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group |
title_short | Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group |
title_sort | verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous amazonian group |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342773/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35913931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270739 |
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