Basic number abilities require suitable language?
In what would seem to be a sudden, surprise counterattack by the Whorfian hypothesis, a tribe of otherwise smart people have been discovered whose language doesn’t have words for specific numbers, and where the people have major trouble with the idea of specific numbers of things (even when taught & when trying very hard). The children of the tribe can pick up numbers easily, but the adults don’t.
Constance Holden. Life Without Numbers in the Amazon. Science 2004; 305 (5687) : 1093a (in News of the Week)
More information is in this CNN article.
August 20th, 2004 at 2:07 am
Katherine told me about this
August 22nd, 2004 at 4:29 pm
Some discussion on this over at Nature http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040816/full/040816-10.html