Verbal counting and spatial strategies in numerical tasks: Evidence from indigenous Australia

In this study, we test whether children whose culture lacks counting words and counting practices, use a spatial strategy to support enumeration tasks. Children from two indigenous communities in Australia whose native and only language (Warlpiri or Anindilyakwa) lacked counting words, were tested on classical number development tasks, and the results compared with children reared in an English-speaking environment. We found that Warlpiriand Anindilyakwa-speaking children performed equivalently to their English-speaking counterparts. However, in tasks in which they were required to match the number of objects in a display, they were more likely to reconstruct part or all of the spatial arrangement of the target than were their English-speaking counterparts. Following John Locke's interpretation of users of similar American languages and in contrast with later Whorfian interpretations, we suggest that counting words may be strategically useful, but that in their absence, other taskspecific strategies will be deployed. Numerical strategies: Evidence from indigenous Australia / 3