U.S.-Brazil Cooperative Research: Cross Cultural and Cross Linguistic Investigations of Deduction and Quantification

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O'Brien0071808This US-Brazil proposal provides support for Drs. David P. O'Brien and Patricia J. Brooks of CUNY Baruch College to work with Professors Antonio Roazzi and Maria G. Dias at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife and Dr. Wany Sampaio of Universidade Federal de Rondonia in Brazil, on cross cultural and development perspectives on the language of thought. NSF's Developmental and Learning Sciences Program is providing co-funding.This project involves the investigation of reasoning skills of people of different ages, in the U.S. and Brazil, who speak English, Portuguese, and Tupi Kawahib dialect. It also will examine the reasoning skills of speakers who have learned language in diverse ways - oral literate, oral illiterate, and deaf. Of particular importance is the planned investigation of members of a recently discovered indigenous tribal group in the southwestern Amazon Basin, the Amondawa, which had its first contact with the outside world in 1986. Before that, it was a stone-age hunter/gatherer group. (This portion of the research will be possible because of the participation of Dr. Wany Sampaio of the Federal University of Rondonia, who has been studying the language of this group for the past six years.)