WEIRD
College Kids and Monkeys About Equal on Math
Robert Preidt
 Many
primates are capable of basic math and pre-verbal “number sense,” but
it’s the use of language to explain abstractions that allows humans to
take math to much higher levels, says a Duke University expert.
Elizabeth Brannon, an assistant professor of psychology and
neuroscience at Duke, studies how human adults and infants, lemurs and
monkeys think about numbers without using language. Her goal is to
identify brain systems that support number sense and determine how this
cognitive skill develops.
“Number [sense] is one of the more abstract domains of cognition:
Three coins and three loaves of bread are very different concepts,”
Brannon said in a Duke news release. “Yet, many studies show that
babies, even in the first year of life, can tell the difference between
quantities.”
She’s found that both human infants and macaque monkeys who’ve seen
the same number of objects repeated in different-looking sets recognize
when there’s a new number of objects.
She also found that college students and macaque have similar speed
and accuracy when doing a rough sort of math by summing sets of objects
without actually counting them. It might come as no surprise that
non-human primates have some fundamental sense of numbers.
(MSN)
White Rock dad busted
after baby son calls 911
 A
baby boy in Canada playing with his dad’s telephone accidentally called
911, which led police to their house - and a 500-plant marijuana-growing
operation.
When White Rock RCMP officers arrived at the rental house, they found
the 11-month-old child fiddling with the phone while his 29-year-old dad
sat watching television. “He was surprised to see us,” Const. Janelle
Canning said.
The 911 call was a hang-up call and police had heard no voices. The
dad, whose name has not been released, protested that he hadn’t called
911 and his son didn’t know how to use the phone.
Nevertheless, police checked the place out because of the amount of
condensation on the house’s windows and found the pot-growing operation
in a locked room.
(Fun-On)
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