Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The extent to which people can infer new mathematical concepts in the absence of cultural support is not clear. We test such learning with a simple math concept: additive commutativity. Experimental work with children in industrialized cultures suggests that cultural support is necessary, since children take time to learn commutativity and ultimately show signs of knowing it after entering school. However, children are at a disadvantage in learning because they are not yet cognitively mature. Moreover, they have only had a short time to experience the world and possibly learn principles like commutativity on their own. Unschooled adults, on the other hand, may be in a better position to have inferred commutativity on their own. We test indigneous Amazonians with variable levels of math cultural supports, and find that those with low cultural supports do not show signs of knowing additive commutativity.