From: dlin@weber.ucsd.edu (Diane Lin)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Infants Have Math Ability (Newspaper Article)
Date: 28 Aug 1992 01:41:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu
Summary: I'm in big trouble!

"Infants Have Math Ability at 5 Months, Study Shows"
		by Thomas H. Maugh II,
		Los Angeles Times, 8/27/92, reprinted w/o permission

	Children as young as 5 months can perform rudimentary
addition and subtraction, indicating that humans are born with an
inherent mathematical ability that is functioning well before they
are taught arithmetic, an Arizona researcher has found.
	The results, reported today in the British journal Nature,
appear to resolve a long-running debate over whether children
distinguish among small numbers of items by consciously counting or
by purely perceptual, non-numerical means.
	The new research shows that they do count, said psychologist
Karen Wynn of the University of Arizona, the paper's author.
"Infants are not just passive recipients that take in the world
passively, but they can actively make inferences and reason about
some aspects of the world," she said.  "This is another instance of
infants having a more surprising understanding of the world than we
had known."
	The findings provide "apparently cast-iron evidence... that
young babies' intellectual skills may go a good deal further" than
scientists had previously believed, said psychologist Peter E.
Bryant of Oxford University in England.  The paper "is a notable
event in the history of developmental psychology," he added.
	"This is a very exciting paper," said UCLA psychologist
Randy Gallistel.  "The assumption used to be that there was
practically nothing going on in the heads of these infants.  Now we
can see that many of the foundations of adult thinking are present
at a very early age... This represents a very dramatic change in our
picture of what you can assume at the onset of cognitive
development."
	But psychologist Mark Strauss of the University of
Pittsburgh cautioned that more work is necessary before any firm
conclusions can be reached.  "It's clear that the infants are aware
of quantities and changes in quantities, and that's an important
skill... but they may just have some type of evidence simply that
something is added or taken" that is independent of arithmetic.
	During the last 20 years, researchers have found that
infants display a remarkable variety of intuitive skills.  Well
before they are 6 months old, infants can tell objects apart by
their size, shape and color.  They can tell when objects are solid.
They know that objects continue to exist when they are hidden.  They
can even tell if a speaking person's lip movements are appropriate
for the speech they are hearing.
	"These are striking skills to find in a creature which used
to be thought of as utterly incompetent and ineffective, but they
could all in one way or another be described--even dismissed--as
perceptual," Bryant said.  Researchers have long argued whether
infants can directly recognize differences in the number of items or
simply see that one group is larger or smaller than another.  Wynn's
results, he said, indicate that the infants have a real numerical
skill.
	Wynn used a "looking-time" procedure that is widely employed
in studying infants.  In essence, the technique relies on the fact
that infants will stare at something that is surprising or
unexpected longer than they will at something that is predicted.
	The researcher uses a display that is something like a
puppet stage.  To conduct an experiment for 1 plus 1, for example,
the child is positioned in front of the display.  A hand places a
Mickey Mouse doll on the stage and it is subsequently hidden behind
a small screen.
	In view of the infant, the hand comes on stage and places a
second doll behind the screen.  The investigators can then leave the
two dolls behind the screen to provide the "correct" answer (2) or
secretly remove one to represent the "wrong" answer (1).  When the
screen is removed, an observer times how long the infant looks at
the doll or dolls.  In six trials, each of 32 infants was given the
correct answer three times and the incorrect answer three times.
	Wynn found that, on average, the infants looked at the
"surprising or unexpected" incorrect answer about 20% longer than
they did at the correct answer.  The same results were obtained when
the problem was subtraction:  2 minus 1.
	Wynn is now performing the experiment using slightly larger
problems, such as 2 plus 1, but does not have any results yet.  She
will not be able to go to larger numbers, however, because other
studies indicate that infants cannot perceive numbers larger than
four.
	"What this shows," she said, "is that infants truly have
numerical concepts and are capable of understanding relationships
between the numbers.  Infants have a much richer understanding of
the physical world than we give them credit for."
	The study has no practical implications, but "it is
extremely important to the whole field of psychology becuse it is an
attempt to understand how the mind works," Gallistel said.  "Our
view of cognitive devleoment was shaped by the philosophy of
British empiricists that attributed an absolute minimum of structure
to the undeveloped mind."  Wynn's results, and other studies on
perception, "are radically transforming that view.  There is a lot
more structure there than had previously been asusmed."

====================================================================

Yikes!  And all the times I thought Dylan was just staring off into
space, receiving alien signals, he could have been balancing our
checkbook :-)
-- 
Diane C. Lin			"Live now; make *now* always the
dlin@weber.ucsd.edu	         most precious time.  Now will 
(Dylan's mom, 20 months)	 never come again." (ST:TNG)
Newsgroups: misc.kids