Researcher Brian Butterworth

One of the earliest things American children are taught is how to count items out loud: one, two, three… But how much do humans understand about numbers before they learn this vocabulary? An interesting study conducted by Brian Butterworth and colleagues at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London addressed this question with Australian Aboriginal children, whose society doesn’t use counting words beyond one, two, few and many.

Check out these articles for more info:

• TVNZ: Humans may have innate math skills
• redOrbit: Is the ability to count innate?