Posted on 01/20/2006 3:11:23 AM PST by Pharmboy
Amazonian hunter-gatherers who lack written language and who have never seen a math book score highly on basic tests of geometric concepts, researchers said on Thursday in a study that suggests geometry may be hard-wired into the brain.
Adults and children alike showed a clear grasp of concepts such as where the center of a circle is and the logical extension of a straight line, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Science.
Stanislas Dehaene of the College de France in Paris and colleagues tested 14 children and 30 adults of an Amazonian group called the Munduruku, and compared their findings to tests of U.S. adults and children.
"Munduruku children and adults spontaneously made use of basic geometric concepts such as points, lines, parallelism, or right angles to detect intruders in simple pictures, and they used distance, angle, and sense relationships in geometrical maps to locate hidden objects," they wrote.
"Our results provide evidence for geometrical intuitions in the absence of schooling, experience with graphic symbols or maps, or a rich language of geometrical terms."
Geometry is an ancient field and Dehaene's team postulated that it may spring from innate abilities.
"Many of its propositions -- that two points determine a line, or that three orthogonal axes localize a point -- are judged to be self-evident and yet have been questioned on the basis of logical argument, physical theory, or experiment," the researchers wrote.
There was no way the Munduruku could have learned these ideas, they added.
"Most of the children and adults who took part in our experiments inhabit scattered, isolated villages and have little or no schooling, rulers, compasses, or maps," they wrote.
"Furthermore, the Munduruku language has few words dedicated to arithmetical, geometrical, or spatial concepts, although a variety of metaphors are spontaneously used."
They designed arrays of six images, each of which contained five conforming to a geometric concept and one that violated it.
"The participants were asked, in their language, to point to the weird or ugly one," the researchers wrote.
"All participants, even those aged 6, performed well above the chance level of 16.6 percent," they found. The average score was nearly 67 percent correct -- identical to the score for U.S. children.
"The spontaneous understanding of geometrical concepts and maps by this remote human community provides evidence that core geometrical knowledge, like basic arithmetic, is a universal constituent of the human mind," they concluded.
Math ping...for your personal interests and not meant for you to ping your lists.
Geometry is crucial to land navigation. It's not surprising that hunters understand
They should've done their study in a pool hall... er... billiards parlor.
My geometry course was more demanding than this but then, I went to a Catholic High School
So, primitive hunter-gatherers who have never been inside a classroom score as high on geometry as American children who are being "educated" at $10,000 per head per year.
Great point...don't tell the teacher's union.
"Many of its propositions -- that two points determine a line, or that three orthogonal axes localize a point -- are judged to be self-evident and yet have been questioned on the basis of logical argument, physical theory, or experiment," the researchers wrote.There was no way the Munduruku could have learned these ideas, they added.
"So, primitive hunter-gatherers who have never been inside a classroom score as high on geometry as American children who are being "educated" at $10,000 per head per year."
But US students educated at 10,000/year can read and write whereas the "primitive" hunters cannot - er, well, never mind.
Oooh, we have grant money to spend! Let's question obvious, self evident minutiae!
yay for science!
I speculate that this concept could be turned around, using pictures like this to reinforce intuitive ideas of geometric concepts before the formalities are introduced. Such as work on boosting the 67% picture choosing scores to something much higher using colloquial explanations of the differences.
Other animals may rely primarily on scent and scent-memory for finding things -- but it would seem that primates evolved with a different set of capabilities to solve the same problem.
High School Geometry is easily mastered by students if the basis of real-world concepts is in place.
Many students need to re-visit childhood activities ... drawing maps, writing directions, designing something to build or arrange, basic play and games, etc.
Computer activities and xeroxed work sheets can work for lots of necessary pre-requisites to Geometry success, but the hands-on aspects early man wired our brains with created the need for hands-on real-world type experiences to fully develop them.
So, if you know a child who can't do or learn Geometry, bring him or her out to play!
but be sure to use a little "running english" to make sure that geometry is not overcome by physics.
Do you believe that 67% of government school education children in the country can read and write?
ping
Great thread. Wouldja believe it, I once toyed with the idea of a math ping list. I didn't assemble many names, and I soon dropped the project. Someone else should pick it up. Anyway, this topic is broader than math, so I'll add a few others ...
And somewhere a honeybee is doing a happy dance...playing charades...and using geometry. :)
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