Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, Gif sur Yvette, France.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Jun;24(6):1037-43. doi: 10.1177/0956797612464057. Epub 2013 Apr 26.
All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the numbers of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Interindividual 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 Mundurucú, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematics education. By comparing Mundurucú subjects with and without access to schooling, we found that education significantly enhances the acuity with which sets of concrete objects are estimated. These results indicate that culture and education have an important effect on basic number perception. We hypothesize that symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical thinking mutually enhance one another over the course of mathematics instruction.
所有人都拥有一个普遍的、进化古老的近似数量系统（ANS），该系统能够以有限精度的比率来估计和组合集合中的物体数量。ANS 的精确性在个体间存在差异，这种差异与数学成就相关，但这种相关性的原因从未被确定过。我们在亚马逊地区的原住民蒙杜鲁库族中获得了儿童和成人的 ANS 精确性的心理物理学测量值，他们的数字词汇非常有限，并且接受数学教育的机会非常多变。通过比较有和没有接受学校教育的蒙杜鲁库族受试者，我们发现教育显著提高了对具体物体集合的估计精度。这些结果表明，文化和教育对基本的数字感知有重要影响。我们假设，在数学教学过程中，符号和非符号的数字思维相互促进。
