Basic math in monkeys and college students

Adult humans possess a sophisticated repertoire of mathematical faculties. Many of these capacities are rooted in symbolic language and are therefore unlikely to be shared with nonhuman animals. However, a subset of these skills is shared with other animals, and this set is considered a cognitive ve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2007-12, Vol.5 (12), p.e328-e328
Main Authors: Cantlon, Jessica F, Brannon, Elizabeth M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal cognition
Animals
Cognition - physiology
Cognitive ability
Evolutionary Biology
Female
Humans
Macaca mulatta - physiology
Mathematics
Monkeys & apes
Neuroscience
Primates
Students - statistics & numerical data
Time Factors
Universities
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Summary:Adult humans possess a sophisticated repertoire of mathematical faculties. Many of these capacities are rooted in symbolic language and are therefore unlikely to be shared with nonhuman animals. However, a subset of these skills is shared with other animals, and this set is considered a cognitive vestige of our common evolutionary history. Current evidence indicates that humans and nonhuman animals share a core set of abilities for representing and comparing approximate numerosities nonverbally; however, it remains unclear whether nonhuman animals can perform approximate mental arithmetic. Here we show that monkeys can mentally add the numerical values of two sets of objects and choose a visual array that roughly corresponds to the arithmetic sum of these two sets. Furthermore, monkeys' performance during these calculations adheres to the same pattern as humans tested on the same nonverbal addition task. Our data demonstrate that nonverbal arithmetic is not unique to humans but is instead part of an evolutionarily primitive system for mathematical thinking shared by monkeys.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050328