<![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Oh, yeah...
Seventy-two wires coming out of my head.
..yeah...
Definitely seventy-two, definitely.

steven522

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> There is no spoon.

But there are three extra butter knives and too many napkins.

DCI Gene Hunt

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> "Let's watch Junior's EEG during hour 30 of our Teletubbies immersion experiment"

AmishJohn

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> That baby is how I'd imagine the twins from Matrix Reloaded to look like as children.

Metropolis

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> I'm calling foul. There's no way they could get a 4 month old to keep that crazy hat on their head unless they restrained them. The study should say "children who are tied down can recognize numbers earlier..."

DarkPlaces

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Smith! 6079 Smith W! No pacifiers!

Transuranic

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Wow... that kid looks like a tech-oriented Medusa.

vansau

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Now there's a child that may need some therapy. "Then when I was 4 months old Mom and Dad let some crazy scientist cover my head in electrodes...."

Little Time Bomb

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> I for one welcome our baby overlords.

Gann

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> That picture is scarier than any horror film I've seen in a decade.

Ken Keegan

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> @moff: Also, I would really resent having to change the channel.

moff

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> @dOk: But doesn't the counting aloud more or less involve talking?

My kids are only watching porno until they're at least ten, because I don't want them to grow up with any of those crazy Western sexual hangups.

moff

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Well my 3yr old could count (at about 1yr old out loud) before he learned to talk... ( he learned to count both foward and backwards)
But he also did have a steady diet of Sesame Street starting at 6 months, mainly because we had to distract him long enough to shower or do anything else.

So don't listen to the anti-TV crowd, if you allow them to watch the right programs, they will learn faster.

dOk

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> @grenacia: Well, then you'll be in trouble if you have a stroke in your Frontal Calculation Lobe, or whatever it is.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Its all ones and zeros to me anyway.

zenpoet

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> This explains how the people at Fox News are able to exist. Their baby-like brains, which cannot deal with rational thought, drift more towards the incredibly interesting numbers in their paychecks.

Pope John Peeps II

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> @braak: We don't all use the same methods to multiply numbers. You can actually do the calculation, you can do the calculation with learned shortcuts, or you can memorize tables. Schools try to get kids to memorize tables, but I think its a sucky way to learn how numbers work. I never memorized my multiplication tables, nor did a lot of people I know. Instead some of us form an understanding of how the numbers relate, and use shortcuts to calculate individually, only memorizing the most commonly done equations as a side effect.

grenacia

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Creepy looking? Hmmm, maybe a little. I tend to think it's high-tech weird-o-ramma stuff. You know, where you take your kid to be programmed with downloading. Or maybe it's where really busy parents take their kids so they can have a virtual play date.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> @NefariousNewt: I read...somewhere, probably in an Oliver Sacks book, about people that had strokes that affected the "math" parts of their brains. And because there's a fuction of your brain that's designed specifically to count, add, and subtract, if you get a stroke there, you can lose that ability.

But! If that happens, your ability to multiply is not lost, because times tables are learned by rote.

I always thought that was awesome.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Am I the only one who thinks the pictures is just a bit creepy looking?

shan6

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> That kid is gonna have a wild perm! I can understand why numbers would work, as they are less abstract than words. The brain is hardwired to sort and catagorize, and that requires some factory-installed software that allows for numbers.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Well, my favorite book as an infant was Learning to Count with Twelve Elves, so I guess that explains why I'm such a genius now.

moff

]]> <![CDATA[Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking]]> Duh!

A 4 1/2 month old has no language skills to speak of and is just tuning in to the complex series of phonemes that they hear uttered by the people around them. Their visual world is much richer, though a bit fuzzy, so it stands to reason their brain would be adapted to first detect changes in large numbers of objects, then slowly enhance that ability to discriminate smaller and smaller numbers as their visual acuity increases along with their fine motor coordination.

I have really got to get me some of this grant money.

NefariousNewt

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