Re:Chickens Agree: Left Means Less; Right Means More
by bko on Friday January 30, 2015 @09:14AM
(#8972056)
My favorite line from the article:
>The scientists trained 64 chicks to find a mealworm behind a plastic panel with five red squares on it (16 chicks were disqualified after showing “poor mealworm-following behavior,” the researchers wrote).
Re:Chickens Agree: Left Means Less; Right Means More
by razzaj on Friday January 30, 2015 @09:02AM
(#8972010)
"a possibility that was raised by some studies that found that in Arabic-speaking countries, where letters and numbers are read right to left, the mental number scale was reversed."
This is wrong, despite Arabic being an RTL language, in Arabic numbers are written, and read [1], in the same orientation as in Latin, Left to right. e.g. So 1,230 is written in the same orientation in arabic.
[1] this applies to all numbers with more than 3 digits. things are a little more complex for 2 digits numbers. As in English and French 12, or 11 are speller as "one word", however 35 in Arabic is spelled five and thirty instead of thirty five.
[2] the "latin" numerals are actually arabic numerals. The current numbers used in Arabic speaking countries are suspected to be of Roman origin according the wikipida article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals.
Re:Chickens Agree: Left Means Less; Right Means More
by jawns on Friday January 30, 2015 @09:21AM
(#8972088)
One thing that interests me, though the article and study don't touch on it, is that we as humans tend to visualize our number lines on the X axis (e.g. left and right), rather than the Y axis (up and down), Z axis (forward and backward), or W axis (ana and kata).
I know there are some writing systems in which writing is done up/down rather than left/right. I wonder how that influences the spatial visualization of numbers.
I also wonder whether other species might visualize numbers on something other than the X axis.
Re:Chickens Agree: Left Means Less; Right Means More
by chrisBob on Friday January 30, 2015 @08:24AM
(#8971837)
In arabic the numbers are written the same way they are in english. This makes it very strange to watch someone type because they are typing from right to left, and then the computer switches from adding to the left to adding characters on the right of the curser when you start to enter a number.
I didn't interact much with Iraqi chickens, so I can't answer the second part of your question.
--
Is anyone else skeptical about their findings? I am reminded of the Feynman story about the rat experiment by Mr. Young. http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/02/the_rat_experim...
>The scientists trained 64 chicks to find a mealworm behind a plastic panel with five red squares on it (16 chicks were disqualified after showing “poor mealworm-following behavior,” the researchers wrote).
This is wrong, despite Arabic being an RTL language, in Arabic numbers are written, and read [1], in the same orientation as in Latin, Left to right. e.g. So 1,230 is written in the same orientation in arabic.
[1] this applies to all numbers with more than 3 digits. things are a little more complex for 2 digits numbers. As in English and French 12, or 11 are speller as "one word", however 35 in Arabic is spelled five and thirty instead of thirty five.
[2] the "latin" numerals are actually arabic numerals. The current numbers used in Arabic speaking countries are suspected to be of Roman origin according the wikipida article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals.
I know there are some writing systems in which writing is done up/down rather than left/right. I wonder how that influences the spatial visualization of numbers.
I also wonder whether other species might visualize numbers on something other than the X axis.
[1]I don't have a source, so consider it "bloke down the pub" reliability.
What about their chickens?
I didn't interact much with Iraqi chickens, so I can't answer the second part of your question.