EDUCATION ENHANCES THE ACUITY OF THE NON-VERBAL APPROXIMATE NUMBER SYSTEM

• Published in: Psychological science Vol. 24; no. 6; pp. 1037 - 1043
• Main Authors: Piazza, Manuela, Pica, Pierre, Izard, Véronique, Spelke, Elizabeth, Dehaene, Stanislas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 26.04.2013
• ISSN: 0956-7976; 1467-9280
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797612464057

All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the number of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Inter-individual 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 Mundurucu, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematical education. By comparing Mundurucu subjects with or without access to schooling, we demonstrate that education significantly enhances the acuity with which sets of concrete objects are estimated. These results speak in favor of an important effect of culture and education on basic number perception. We hypothesize that symbolic and non-symbolic numerical thinking mutually enhance one another over the course of mathematics instruction.