Well, maybe they are, still. The Associated Press, via WRAL.com, reports that scientists have found an interesting difference in the way that Chinese- and English-speakers process math problems:
Researchers used brain imaging to see which parts of the brain were active while people did simple addition problems, such as 3 plus 4 equals 7. All participants were working with Arabic numerals which are used in both cultures.
Both groups engaged a portion of the brain called the inferior parietal cortex, which is involved in quantity representation and reading.
But native English speakers also showed activity in a language processing area of the brain, while native Chinese speakers used a brain region involved in the processing of visual information, according to the report in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
There are conjectures in the article about why this may be, but IMO the key is likely in the difference between the languages. Although Arabic numerals are common in both cultures, I suspect that the Chinese are accustomed to processing symbols — whether numerals or characters — as visual cues of larger concepts, while Anglophone students with their phonetic training are routing the numeric symbols through the same mental registers as they would to break down a string of alphabetic data into components.
Another study on the way the two groups approach a picture gave a similar result:
Nisbett last year reported on differences in the way Asians and North Americans view pictures. He tracked eye movements and determined that, when shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene.
But I also suspect that since Arabic numerals are neither phonetic nor conceptual, it is a distinction that doesn’t make a difference. Eventually you have to get down to place value, no matter how you’d describe it over the phone.
