Interesting point about the difficulty in remembering "six" without the word for it.
I would add that it is not clear whether or not the psycologist ever indicated to the tribesmen if he considered the answers they gave correct. If I were from the tribe and I conceived of "six" as "many," it would affect how I responded to a group of six items placed in front of me. I might respond to the pile of six items with seven items, not because I could not distinguish between six and seven, but because I am responding to a pile of "many" with another pile of "many." It does not *matter* to me whether there are six or seven items in the pile, both piles contain "many." I would never even know the pyscologist considered my answer wrong.
Now, if the tribesmen were carefully adding or removing one item at a time to their pile while checking back towards the psycologists pile, but still placed the wrong number of items in their pile, I would give the results of this study much more credence. As is, I don't know either way, as I couldn't find the report's fulltext online.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting point about the difficulty in remembering "six" without the word for it.
I would add that it is not clear whether or not the psycologist ever indicated to the tribesmen if he considered the answers they gave correct. If I were from the tribe and I conceived of "six" as "many," it would affect how I responded to a group of six items placed in front of me. I might respond to the pile of six items with seven items, not because I could not distinguish between six and seven, but because I am responding to a pile of "many" with another pile of "many." It does not *matter* to me whether there are six or seven items in the pile, both piles contain "many." I would never even know the pyscologist considered my answer wrong.
Now, if the tribesmen were carefully adding or removing one item at a time to their pile while checking back towards the psycologists pile, but still placed the wrong number of items in their pile, I would give the results of this study much more credence. As is, I don't know either way, as I couldn't find the report's fulltext online.
-Sparks