Children who are good at estimating the number of objects in a group also do well in math, according to scientists.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences published their findings in the journal Nature in October.

“One of the most fascinating aspects of our result," according to principle investigator Jusin Halberda of Johns Hopkins, "is that performance in formal school mathematics is related to a simple, intuitive number sense that we all share. It’s available to infants without training and is used by every human in every culture, as well as by rats, monkeys, and other animals.” Haberda is assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Hopkins.

This Approximate Number System—which is shared broadly across species—is one of two forms of mathematical thinking to which humans have access. Formal mathematics, which is culturally transmitted through learning, is an exclusively human invention. Halberda’s study shows that these two types of mathematical thinking interact, but are not dependent on each other.

The scientist’s  research team didn’t conduct any experiments in formal mathematics—the kind that takes (often frustrating) years of schooling to learn and master. Instead, 64 fourteen-year-olds were asked to estimate the number of flashing blue and yellow dots on a computer screen and estimate which dots were more numerous. While most subjects could easily estimate the number between groups when the discrepancy was large, some struggled when the number was nearer to equal. This helped the researchers determine the accuracy of individual number sense in each subject.

After examining each teenager’s recorded academic performance in math all the way back through kindergarten, the researchers found that those whose number sense was more acute as teenagers had performed at a higher level in mathematics than those with weaker number sense.

Though many of the newspaper accounts of this study suggested number sense may predict math performance, other experts disagree.

“There are a lot of factors that determine how good a child does in math in school,” said John Bates, developmental psychologist at Indiana University in Bloomington. “Of course after 14 years of formal schooling in math, those who performed well throughout would also perform well on a simple numerical task. [This study] isn’t proving that individual differences in mathematics are due to number sense.”

Social psychologist Charles Seger, also at Indiana, had similar doubts about the study.

“Any time I see researchers making a causal attribution to an “evolutionary” process, it seems a bit like hand waving to me,” he said. “If they wanted to really determine any kind of innate number sense, they would have to test subjects who haven’t had 14 years of mathematics behind them. If you’re confident that you’re good at math, you’re not going to be intimidated by a test that involves number estimation. So you can’t assume that an assessment of “inbred” number sense at age 14 says anything about a child’s ability to perform better in school.”

Both Bates and Seger expressed concern for measuring this innate cognitive ability at an age where experience and practice have combined to possibly account for the findings. Bates likened taking number sense data from 14 year olds to testing the endurance of a long-time runner.

“Of course you can say there’s something innate about our ability to count, or at least to estimate and work with numbers. But breathing is evolutionarily innate, and all humans and animals do that too,” said Bates. “If I measure the lung capacity of a runner who loves running and has been doing it all his life, the result is going to be different than if I measure the lung capacity of you or me. If I measure the abilities of a 14 year old who likes math, or is confident in math, or has been practicing in school, then of course I expect that their score will be significantly higher on a number sense task.”

Halberda too says that while the ANS and mathematical capability are related, mathematical performance cannot be attributed to number sense alone.

“It remains to be seen if one can improve a student’s innate number sense by practice and training,” he said. “There are important practical implications that we are exploring in new studies, and we should note that there are many factors that can impact a student’s success or failure in learning mathematics.”

Perhaps the most helpful data to be taken from this study has nothing to do with number sense or performance in math. The more important lesson lies in realizing that popular articles about social and psychological sciences—no matter where they are published or who says they’re right—should always be subject to scrutiny from the reader.

“This is a published study,” said Seger. “It’s not that I think the research was poorly conducted or that the research team has no idea what they’re talking about. I just doubt that the correlation they’re showing is significant, or is causal. The results aren’t really coming to much of a conclusion at all.”

Binge drinking. Drunkenness. Benders.

These are terms we have all heard around Indiana University, but researchers from the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP) want to add another word to our vocabulary for drinking in excess, “extreme drinking.”

Adding extreme drinking to research studies will broaden the scope of research on alcohol consumption to include social and behavioral issues involved with drinking heavily, according Marjana Martinic, vice president for public health at the ICAP, a non-profit organization that promotes understanding of alcohol in society and works to reduce alcohol abuse.

“Binge drinking has been a term of controversy among scientists for some time now," Martinic explained.  "It is a very narrow term, that is defined differently over different disciplines,” and a broader term that takes more factors into account is needed. 

Extreme drinking goes beyond just intoxication, she explained. It includes the progression of  drinkers to their destination, drunkenness. It also includes the reasons drinkers imbibe; an extreme drinker drinks to have a sense of “controlled loss of control.”

 America, including Indiana University, has many extreme drinkers, according to the ICAP, which points the  finger at the larger culture. Drinking socially, even to excess, is not socially stigmatized in our culture, and in many ways, it is encouraged.

At IU, it may also be because of a large number of different students from a variety of backgrounds all come to the campus and party in similar ways (re: drinking excessively), according to Keith Cash, captain of operations for the Indiana University Police Department.

Cash said he has seen this type of drinking both from behind the badge and as a former student here. “Since these were young folks raised in different backgrounds, even cultures yet acted in the same way," he said, "I would conclude much of this is like a rite of passage," he said,   even "part of the college experience."

Drinking games, 21 shots on your 21^st birthday, tailgating for hours on end, have all done the same thing — increased the amount of alcohol you drink in a shorter period of time than you would normally, according to Robert Slisz, an Indiana University professor who studies drug use in American society.

This type of drinking can be hazardous to your health and potentially cause death.

Although  Slisz says he sees "no visible difference regarding binge drinking" in his ten years on campus, he does "feel that the culture is changing for the better.” People are making wiser decisions about going out drinking, most notably, bringing a sober driver to the bars or other drinking events to make sure everyone gets home safe, he says,  a message that is echoed by ICAP’s Martinic.

The ICAP  receives its funding from major alcohol manufacturers but claims that this does not bias its scientists’ findings. ICAP does not lobby governments and does not represent the alcohol industry.

Slisz reports that research on abuses is common in several different industries in which companies profit off of potentially harmful sources, such as tobacco and gambling industries.

For additional information go to ICAP’s website at http://www.icap.org

–Jeff Maitland

“Numerous studies have identified that children who see or experience conflict when they were younger go on to have more conflict themselves when they get into relationships,” says Prof. Brian D’Onofrio, an IU researcher in developmental psychopathology. “The crucial aspect of this research is that it looks at the underlying mechanisms.”

The study examined how aggressively children reacted to their peers from the age of five and into their early 20’s using a variety of measures. The researchers asked children to give their responses to hypothetical conflict situations shown on video. Then, in their later adolescent years, researchers interviewed them about conflict in their romantic relationships. The researchers compared this information with measures of their parents’ aggressive behaviors and analyzed the data, which was amassed from over 400 children and their parents, to uncover what processes were most critical. The results showed that the kind of actions children thought were most useful in conflict situations accounted for their imitation of their parents’ approaches to conflict.

In other words, children who grew up in high-conflict environments and went on to adopt that aggression later on also viewed aggression as a more suitable solution to social clashes.

Professor Amy Holtzworth-Munroe, an IU co-author of the study, emphasized that it remains important to consider a variety of approaches to the problem of the continuation of violence through generations.

“There are very few studies that are longitudinal in the sense of being able to look at those teenage and childhood factors to look at who becomes violent in relationships,” she said. “And we need to look at other models.” She pointed to other potential key factors, such as genetic predispositions and trauma experienced by children during developmental years. Factors like the neighborhood these children were raised in or a tendency toward impulsivity inherited from parents may also be important, D’Onofrio added.

One continuing goal for this study, according to Dr. Holtzworth-Munroe, is to look at how subjects in this younger generation, now in their early 20’s, behave as long-term partners and spouses. The researchers hope to learn more as they observe these subjects as they raise children of their own.

So what can parents do to break cycles of violence? One clear way to mitigate violence in children, says D’Onofrio, is to decrease their exposure to violence.

“You can reduce intermarital conflict,” he says.

But he cautions that there are many possible causes of marital conflict that may be hard to pinpoint or control from the outside. One remedy for children who have grown up around intermarital violence is to ensure that they adopt more appropriate strategies.

Bates says it is important that children learn to respond productively to conflicts before they become adults. And parents can take steps to help their children form healthy solutions to the rocky terrain that they encounter in later romantic relationships.

Professor Kenneth Dodge of Duke University, a collaborator on this study, emphasized parents’ role in working with their children to develop appropriate reactions toward conflict.

“Some children have learned to regulate their responses through experiences, feedback, and practice,” says Dodge. Many children and adolescents, on the other hand, haven’t developed productive approaches to disagreements. Dodge also identifies children’s undeveloped skills in thinking ahead as a significant issue.

“It can help for parents to go through possible responses with their children, thinking through them and making them explicit,” Bates says.

Regardless, all the researchers agree that there’s no substitute for teaching by example.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation.