NBC News: Study Suggests Baby Chicks Can Count ... From Left to Right! [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/study-suggests-baby-chicks-can-count-left-right-n297376

It's not just humans who can count: Newly published research suggests chicks seem to have a number sense, too.

Scientists found that chicks seem to count upward, moving from left to right. They put smaller numbers on the left, and larger numbers on the right — the same mental representation of the number line that humans use.

"Our results suggest a rethinking of the relationship between numerical abilities and verbal language, providing further evidence that language and culture are not necessary for the development of a mathematical cognition," said study lead author Rosa Rugani, a psychologist at the University of Padova in Italy.

The left-to-right way of thinking about ascending numbers seems to be embedded in people's mental representations of numbers, but it's not clear exactly why. Is it an artifact of some long-lost accident of history, or is it a fundamental aspect of the way the brain processes numbers?

FULL story at link.

Published on Jan 30, 2015
Researchers for the first time identified human's innate preference for associating low and high numbers with the left and right respectively in another species. Jen Markham (@jenmarkham) explains.

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