Basic Math In Monkeys And College Students

Adult humans possess mathematical abilities that are unmatched by any
other member of the animal kingdom. Yet, there is increasing evidence that
the
ability to count sets of objects nonverbally is a capacity that humans
share with other animal species. This week in the open-access journal PLoS
Biology, Elizabeth Brannon and Jessica Cantlon set out to discover whether
humans and nonhuman animals also share a capacity for nonverbal
arithmetic.


The researchers tested monkeys and college students on a nonverbal
arithmetic task in which they had to add the numerical values of two sets
of dots
together and choose a stimulus from two options that reflected the
arithmetic sum of the two sets.

The results indicate that monkeys perform
approximate mental addition in a manner that is remarkably similar to the
performance of the college students. These findings support the argument
that humans and nonhuman primates share a cognitive system for nonverbal
arithmetic, which likely reflects an evolutionary link in their cognitive
abilities.



Citation: Cantlon JF, Brannon EM (2007) Basic math in monkeys and college
students. PLoS Biol 5(12): e328. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050328
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