Core knowledge of geometry in an Amazonian indigene group

Science

Volumn 311, Issue 5759, 2006, Pages 381-384

  Dehaene, Stanislas ^a,b   Izard, Véronique ^a   Pica, Pierre ^c   Spelke, Elizabeth ^d  

^a Commissariat À l'Energie Atomique ^*  (France)

^b l'alimentation et l'Environnement   (France)

^c UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 8   (France)

^d HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPUTER GRAPHICS; FORMAL LANGUAGES;

AMAZONIAN INDIGENE GROUP; GEOMETRICAL MAPS; RIGHT ANGLES; SCHOOLING;

GEOMETRY;

ANTHROPOLOGY;

ADULT; ARTICLE; GEOMETRY; HUMAN; INDIGENT; LANGUAGE; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SCHOOL; SOCIAL ISOLATION;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; AGED, 80 AND OVER; ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE; BRAZIL; CHILD; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; COMPREHENSION; CULTURE; FEMALE; HUMANS; INDIANS, SOUTH AMERICAN; KNOWLEDGE; LANGUAGE; MALE; MAPS; MATHEMATICS; MIDDLE AGED;

EID: 31144467288     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: 10959203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.1121739     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Euclid, Elements (Green Lion, Santa Fe, NM, 2002).
2. I. Kant, A Critique of Pure Reason (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1781, 1920).
3. B. Riemann, Nature 8, 183 (1873).
4. H. Poincaré, La Science et l'Hypothèse (Flammarion, Paris, 1902).
5. A. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Henry Holt, New York, 1920).
6. L. Boi, Le problème mathématique de l'espace. Une quête de l'intelligible (Springer, Berlin, 1995).
7. P. Pica, C. Lemer, V. Izard, S. Dehaene, Science 306, 499 (2004).
8. L. Franco, R. W. Sperry, Neuropsychologia 15, 107 (1977).
9. Materials and methods are available as supporting material on Science Online.
10. J. Piaget, Child's Conception of Geometry (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1948, 1960).
11. R. N. Shepard, Behav. Brain Sci. 24, 581 (2001).
12. Plato, Mena (∼380 B.C.), available online at classics.mit.edu.
13. O. Keller, Aux origines de la géométrie. Le paléolithique, le monde des chosseurs-cuellleurs (Vuibert, Paris, 2004).
14. C. R. Gallistel, The Organization of Learning (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990).
15. K. Cheng, N. S. Newcombe, Psychon. Bull. Rev. 12, 1 (2005).
16. N. S. Newcombe, J. Huttenlocher, Making Space (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000).
17. A. Berthoz, The Brain's Sense of Movement (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000).
18. J. S. DeLoache, Science 238, 1556 (1987).
19. D. P. Marzolf, J. S. DeLoache, Child Dev. 65, 1 (1994).
20. S. J. Hespos, E. S. Spelke, Nature 430, 453 (2004).
21. L. Hermer, E. Spelke, Cognition 61, 195 (1996).
22. A. Majid, M. Bowerman, S. Kita, D. B. Haun, S. C. Levinson, Trends Cogn. Sci. 8, 108 (2004).
23. S. C. Levinson, Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003).
24. S. C. Levinson, S. Meira, Language 79, 485 (2003).
25. P. Li, L Gleitman, Cognition 83, 265 (2002).
26. S. Dehaene, The Number Sense (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1997).
27. Authors are listed in alphabetical order. This work would not have been possible without the help of A. Arnor, V. Poxō, A. Ramos, C. Tawé, F. Tawé, and A. Tawé, and of the Department of Studies and Research of Funai. It is based on data collected by P.P. within a larger project on the nature of quantification and functional categories developed jointly by the linguistic section of the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Rio and the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7023 of the CNRS, with the agreement of Funai and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Technologico (CNPq). We thank M. Crofts for helpful comments, P. Mesureur for video transfer, and A. Grace, L. Hegg, and K. La Mont for help with data collection in Boston. Supported by INSERM, the Département de Sciences Humaines et Sociales of CNRS (P.P.), NIH (E.S.), and a McDonnell Foundation Centennial Fellowship (S.D.).