Knowing the words for numbers is not necessary to be able to count, according to a new study of aboriginal children by UCL (University College London) and the University of Melbourne. The study of the aboriginal children from two communities which do not have words or gestures for numbers found that they were able to copy and perform number-related tasks. The findings suggest that we possess an innate mechanism for counting, which may develop differently in children with dyscalculia, a lessor-known learning disability that affects mathatical calculations. Professor Brian Butterworth, lead author from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, says: ‘Recently, an extreme form of linguistic determinism has been revived which claims that counting words are needed for children to develop concepts of numbers above three. That is, to possess the concept of ‘five’ you need a word for five. Evidence from children in numerate societies, but also from Amazonian adults whose language does not contain counting words, has been used to support this claim. ‘However, our study of aboriginal children suggests that we have an innate system for recognizing and representing numerosities – the number of objects in a set – and that the lack […]