Brian Butterworth


Brian Butterworth FBA is emeritus professor of cognitive neuropsychology in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His research has ranged from speech errors and pauses, short-term memory deficits, dyslexia, reading both in alphabetic scripts and Chinese, and mathematics and dyscalculia. His book The Mathematical Brain has been translated into four languages. He was Editor-in-Chief of Linguistics and a founding editor of the journals Language and Cognitive Processes and Mathematical Cognition. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
In 1984 he diagnosed President Ronald Reagan on the basis of speech errors in his presidential re-election speeches in an article in the Sunday Times as having Alzheimer's disease ten years before this was formally identified. He was a coauthor in 1971 of a pamphlet, Marked for life, critical of university examinations.
He designed the world's largest mathematical experiment involving over 18,000 people at Explore-At-Bristol. In the serious game for elementary school children with dyscalculia, Meister Cody, he lends his voice to Quoun, the Guardian of the Trees.

Subitizing experiment

concerns the ability to instantly identify the number of items without counting. Collections of four or below are usually subitised with collections of larger numbers being counted. Brian Butterworth designed an experiment that ran as an interactive exhibit at the Explore-At-Bristol science museum to find whether subitising differed between women and men. Participants were asked to estimate as fast as they could between one and 10 dots and press the answer on a touch screen. How long they took—their reaction time—was measured. Over 18,000 people took part—the largest number ever to take part in a mathematical cognition experiment. He announced his finding that women were better than men at subitising at the British Association for the Advancement of Science's 2003 annual science festival. He also found that people were six per cent faster on calculating the number of dots if they were presented on the left side of the screen but only if there were five or more and so counted.

Publications

''The Mathematical Brain''

. London: Macmillan.
Published in the same year in the US as What Counts New York: Simon & Schuster.

Other books

Powell A. Butterworth B.. Marked for life: a criticism of assessment at universities. London, Anarchist Group
Butterworth B.. Language Production Volume 1: Speech and talk Academic Pr
Butterworth B.. Language Production Volume 2: Development, Writing and Other Language Processes Academic Pr
Butterworth B. Comrie B. Dahl O.. Explanations for Language Universals Mouton De Gruyter
Butterworth, B.. Dyscalculia Guidance Helping Pupils with Specific Learning Difficulties in Maths. David Fulton

Speech