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1: Science. 2004 Oct 15;306(5695):496-9. Epub 2004 Aug 19.Click here to read Links
Comment in:
Science. 2005 Feb 4;307(5710):673.
Science. 2005 Mar 18;307(5716):1721-2; author reply 1721-2.

Numerical cognition without words: evidence from Amazonia.

Gordon P.

Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA. pgordon@tc.columbia.edu

Members of the Pirahã tribe use a "one-two-many" system of counting. I ask whether speakers of this innumerate language can appreciate larger numerosities without the benefit of words to encode them. This addresses the classic Whorfian question about whether language can determine thought. Results of numerical tasks with varying cognitive demands show that numerical cognition is clearly affected by the lack of a counting system in the language. Performance with quantities greater than three was remarkably poor, but showed a constant coefficient of variation, which is suggestive of an analog estimation process.

PMID: 15319490 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]