OUR ability to think of numbers as abstract concepts seems to be innate. Babies just a few days old are already able to do it.
Abstract numerical thought is the ability to perceive numbers as entities, independently of specific things. It can be demonstrated by humans’ capacity to link a certain number of objects to the same number of sounds, irrespective of what the specific sounds or objects are. But whether this ability is innate or learned – through culture or language – wasn’t known.
To investigate, of Harvard University and colleagues played babies 4 days old or younger sequences of repeated, spoken syllables while showing them of shapes on a screen. When the number of shapes matched the number of syllables, 15 of the 16 newborns looked for significantly longer at the screen than when it didn’t (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ). “Babies, within a couple of hours of being born, have a very abstract representation of numbers,” says Izard.
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An found that babies a few months old who were played two voices paid more attention to a video of two, rather than three, faces. But in this case the babies might just have learned to link faces with voices, Izard says.