Members in the Media
From: NPR

Guess What? We’re All Born With Mathematical Abilities

NPR:

As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, Kristy vanMarle knew she wanted to go to grad school for psychology, but wasn’t sure what lab to join. Then, she saw a flyer: Did you know that babies can count?

“I thought, No way. Babies probably can’t count, and they certainly don’t count the way that we do,” she says. But the seed was planted, and vanMarle started down her path of study. The person who made that flyer, Karen Wynn, became her mentor and they have since co-published several studies together.

We know now that numeracy at the end of high school is a really strong and important predictor of an individual’s economic and occupational success. We also know from many, many different studies — including those conducted by my MU colleague, David Geary — that kids who start school behind their peers in math tend to stay behind. And the gap widens over the course of their schooling.

Read the whole story: NPR

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