According to a news release from Duke University, babies who are skilled at determining the difference between big and small groups of things prior to learning how to count are more likely be good at math in the future.

The utilization of Arabic numerals to represent various values is a characteristic unique to humans, not observed outside our species. However, we aren’t born with this ability. Babies don’t have the words to count to 10. Thus, researchers have hypothesized that the fundamental sense of numbers in babies is the basis for higher-level math knowledge.

Research conducted by the Duke Institute for Brain Research reveals that children tap into this instinctive numerical skill when learning symbolic mathematical systems. The researchers discovered that the strength of a baby’s innate number sense can be revealing of his or her future mathematical skills.

“When children are acquiring the symbolic system for representing numbers and learning about math in school, they’re tapping into this primitive number sense,” noted study leader Elizabeth Brannon, a professor of psychology and neuroscience. “It’s the conceptual building block upon which mathematical ability is built.”

Brannon pointed out that babies are born with a basic understanding known as primitive number sense. When observing two groups of objects, primitive number sense gives babies the ability to determine which set is numerically bigger even without verbal counting or utilizing Arabic numerals. For instance, a person innately can tell that a group of 15 strawberries is more than six oranges, just by looking.

Knowing how babies and young children visualize mentally and understand numbers can result in the creation of new mathematics education strategies, according to Duke psychology and neuroscience graduate student Ariel Starr. This information can be utilized to form interventions for young children who have difficulty understanding mathematics symbols and fundamental methodologies.

Brannon and Starr studied 48 6-month-old babies to determine whether they could identify numerical alterations, taking advantage of the interest a lot of babies have in things that change. They positioned each baby in front of two screens, one that always displayed the same number of dots, altering in size and position, and another that changed between two different numerical values. In this experiment, babies that could determine the difference between the two numerical values stared longer at the numerically altering screen.

The researchers then tested the same babies at 3.5 years of age with a non-symbolic number comparison game. The children were show two various arrays and asked to select the one that had more dots without counting them. The children also completed a standardized math test scaled for pre-schoolers, as well as a standardized IQ test. The researchers also determined the biggest number word each child could clearly understand.

“We found that infants with higher preference scores for looking at the numerically changing screen had better primitive number sense three years later compared to those infants with lower scores,” Starr noted. “Likewise, children with higher scores in infancy performed better on standardized math tests.”

According to Brannon, the results suggest that there is a real relationship between symbolic math and quantitative skills that exist in infancy before education forms our mathematical abilities.

“Our study shows that infant number sense is a predictor of symbolic math,” Brannon said. “We believe that when children learn the meaning of number words and symbols, they’re likely mapping those meanings onto pre-verbal representations of number that they already have in infancy,” Brannon posited.

“Our findings suggest that there is cognitive overlap between primitive number sense and symbolic math. These are fundamental building blocks.”

The study’s findings are described in greater detail in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.