NanoMath::A Very, Very, Very Small Blog About Math

I am a computing/math instructor at Scottsdale Community College located in Scottsdale, Arizona. I created this blog thinking I'd use it to blog about math, but I haven't gotten around to taking this blog seriously. 3Q'02012 is ending today and I'm thinking about bringing this blog--which had 16 postings on 30 September 02012-- to life.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Babies Might Be Able To "Sense" Math

I was surfing the web and came across a news item about how six month old babies can "do math."
They started the show with two dolls. Before the show ended, a doll was removed and then the infant's vision was blocked with a screen. When the screen was taken away, either one doll was left, as expected, or two dolls, which would not be mathematically correct. The infants looked at the screen longer (8.04 seconds) when the number of dolls was two, which did not agree with the solution of 2 - 1 = 1.
Just like Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones... the babies know something is
happening, they just don't know what it is.

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