問題詳情

A study of deaf people in Nicaragua offers fascinating insights into the linkbetween language acquisition and the understanding of numbers. The findings arebased on field work conducted by Elizabeth Spaepen and her colleagues over threetrips to Nicaragua between 2006 and 2010. Researchers tested four deaf “homesigning”adults for their language skills and facility with numbers. Homesigners communicatethrough entirely made-up hand gestures — while their language is adequate forcommunication with friends and family, it lacks consistent grammar or specificnumber words. What researchers found was that the homesigning adults had a hardtime understanding numbers greater than 3, likely because they didn’t have words torepresent larger sums. By contrast, deaf people who learn conventional sign languagelearn the values of large numbers because they learn a counting routine early inchildhood, just like hearing children who acquire spoken language. The researchersclaim that it’s not just the vocabulary words that matter, but understanding therelationships that underlie the words — the fact that ‘eight’ is one more than ‘seven’and one less than ‘nine.’ They further argue that without having a set of number wordsto guide them, deaf homesigners in the study failed to understand that numbers buildon each other in value.The findings, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, may help researchers understand how children learn numbers,and figure out ways to improve math literacy in kids who have trouble. As Wiredreported, “Research on child development shows that kids start by memorizingnumbers as an ordered list. They can recite the numbers from 1 through 10, but if youask them to give you three apples, they’re just as likely to give you five or seven.” Theage at which kids start connecting their ordered list to numbers of things depends a loton how much reinforcement they have from adults. Some children learn to count byage two; others, usually from disadvantaged households, arrive at school not knowingwhat “two” means. The homesigners represent those disadvantaged kids taken to theextreme. As concluded by Spaepen, language input is important for everybody’srepresentation of number and how counting works.
What is the main purpose of this article?
(A) To summarize the research studies on number.
(B) To discuss the findings of a research study.
(C) To introduce the “homesigning” adults.
(D) To explain how language is learned.

參考答案

答案：B
難度：適中0.625
統計：A(2),B(5),C(0),D(0),E(0)

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