怎樣培養你對數字的敏感度

Being able to speak a language is they key to understanding numbers, scientists have discovered. A research project found that deaf people who had not learned a language containing symbols used for counting were unable to comprehend any number greater than three. Experts said the reason was that they had not studied the familiar ‘count list’ of one to ten that most people are taught when they are young.
　　有科學家經過研究後發現，語言能力高的人對數字的敏感度也很高，在實驗中科學家發現，失聰的人沒有掌握關於“數字語言”情況下，認識的數字不超過3個。專家分析，他們對數字不敏感的主要原因在於這些失聰的人在年幼的時候沒有學會怎樣數數（1--10），專家總結到：數字與語言能力有着重大聯繫。

Children learn such a sequence even before they know what it means and it stays hardwired into their brain for the rest of their lives. The study is the first to identify the link between language and numeracy and was carried out by researchers at the University of Chicago. They studied deaf people from Nicaragua who had created their own unique sign language to talk to one another. These so-called ‘homesigners’ did have numbers in their culture including a monetary system, so any differences they exhibited would have to solely be due to language. The first test involved asking them to answer which had the most value out of a 10-unit, 20-unit and 100-unit coin.

因爲，兒童在最年幼的時候學習“數數”時，也就是從1數到10，他們只是按照順序一個一個數下來，並不知道這些數字所表示的意義。然而，這些數字好比硬性數據一樣存儲到他們的“大腦硬盤”中讓他們在生活中發揮作用。據悉，這個關於數字與語言的聯繫方面的研究是由芝加哥大學的研究人員牽頭的。科學家對來自 Nicaragua 的聾啞人做研究時發現，他們也有他們自己的

“金融系統”。他們用他們自己特色的手語來表達數字時，只要用語言來表達，他們可以正確分辨出不同紙幣的大小。然而當要求他們用語言來表達更深層次的涵蓋有數字的故事時，他們因手語難表達的原因，數字越大，表達起來越費勁。

Susan Goldin-Meadow, a professor in psychology at Chicago University, said: ‘It's not just the vocabulary words that matter, but understanding the relationships that underlie the words - the fact that "eight" is one more than "seven" and one less than "nine".‘Without having a set of number words to guide them, deaf homesigners in the study failed to understand that numbers build on each other in value.’

來自芝加哥大學的心理學家Susan Goldin-Meadow說：“語言表達能力強，對數字的領悟能力更強是一方面，然而，能夠不僅能夠說，而且倘若還能理解到數字下更深層次的含義，語言表達能力會更強。”