2004/10/14 by Pierre Pica, Cathy Lemer, Véronique Izard +1 · 1,325 citations
Mathematics · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills #Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques #Reading and Literacy Development #Arithmetic #Lexicon #Amazonian #Mathematics #Range (aeronautics) #Computer science #Natural language processing
paper · open access · doi:10.1126/science.1102085
published in Science 306(5695), 499-503 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 2004/10/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic.