http://mindhacks.com/2005/06/25/maths-ability-without-language-skills/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Sun, 26 May 2013 04:05:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2005/06/25/maths-ability-without-language-skills/#comment-8329 Sun, 26 Jun 2005 04:04:01 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2005/06/25/maths-ability-without-language-skills/#comment-8329 This could just mean that e.g. the bits of the brain that parse a sentence (mathematical or in natural language) are separate from the bits needed for language comprehension or production. And a hundred other things.
Also, mathematics is rather a large field. That someone can spot that addition is commutative or grasp the ordering of real numbers despite “having no language” (whatever exactly that means) is interesting, but could they product an argument for why addition is commutative? Could they show how to construct a multiplication function given addition? Could they prove other properties of arithmetic, speculate other properties? It would be interesting to ask mathematician to help produce more tests — they certainly should have been consulted before the article was published. It would be a bit nicer if instead of using the word “mathematics” people would be more precise and say e.g. arithmetic calculation.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2005/06/25/maths-ability-without-language-skills/#comment-8328 Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:28:01 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2005/06/25/maths-ability-without-language-skills/#comment-8328 But because the participants in this study were not brain damaged from birth, this research does not rule out the possibility that the acquisition of mathematical ability might depend on language, either in an individual’s development, or evolutionarily. http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2005/04/words-cant-explain-maths.html

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