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Education Enhances the Acuity of the Nonverbal Approximate Number System

Manuela Piazza^1,2,3,4; Pierre Pica⁵; Véronique Izard^6,7; Elizabeth S. Spelke⁸; Stanislas Dehaene^1,2,3,9

¹ Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, Gif sur Yvette, France · ² NeuroSpin Center, DSV, I2BM, CEA, Gif sur Yvette, France · ³ University Paris 11, Orsay · ⁴ Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento · ⁵ Unité Mixte de Recherche 7023, Formal Structures of Language, CNRS & Université Paris VIII, Saint-Denis, France · ⁶ Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Université Paris Descartes · ⁷ Unité Mixte de Recherche 8158, CNRS, Paris, France · ⁸ Department of Psychology, Harvard University · ⁹ Collège de France

All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the numbers of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Interindividual variability in the acuity of the ANS correlates with mathematical achievement, but the causes of this correlation have never been established. We acquired psychophysical measures of ANS acuity in child and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucú, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematics education. By comparing Mundurucú subjects with and without access to schooling, we found that education significantly enhances the acuity with which sets of concrete objects are estimated. These results indicate that culture and education have an important effect on basic number perception. We hypothesize that symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical thinking mutually enhance one another over the course of mathematics instruction.

DOI

10.1177/0956797612464057

Volume

24 (6)

Pages

1037-1043

Language

en

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