>> The Aborigines of Australia have survived the trackless

waste of the continent for centuries.

To do so they have developed extraordinary visual spatial

skills, a feature of the right hemisphere.

Has the combination of experience

and evolution changed the way they think?

Aboriginal children do not perform as well

as white Australian children on conventional verbal tests.

One psychologist, Judy Kearins,

thought the tests might be ignoring the Aborigines

real skills.

>> The children I've found know a great deal more than I do

and a great deal more than most white Australian people.

They take for granted that we possess most

of the knowledge they have, and we don't.

They think that a sense of direction is built

into everybody's instinct, and also the same thing applies

to all their knowledge about the wildlife of their region.

They don't really seem to think that any

of their knowledge is special and it is very much so.

>> Dr. Kearins believes

that Aboriginal children use their visual

and spatial memories more than white children.

She invented a game to test her theory.

The task? To remember the positions of a set

of objects on a board.

The manmade objects should be easier

for verbally oriented children to remember

because natural objects are not as easily described

and remembered in words.

Kearins used both natural and manmade objects.

>> All right, open your eyes and see.

>> The most difficult group of all

to describe verbally-- 12 stones.

Filimina has 30 seconds

to memorize the positions of the stones.

She can take as long as she likes to put them back.

[ Pause ]

>> Okay, very good.

Now I'll show you, they're almost all in the right places.

That one's right.

That one's right.

That one's right.

That one's right.

So is that and that and that.

That is. That is.

That is. That is.

These two should be swapped around.

I've been testing aboriginal children between the ages

of 6 and about 16 years

and they always perform better than white Australian children

and also the rate of superiority,

if you like, stays about the same.

They perform at about the, about three years ahead

of the white Australian children.

So that an Aboriginal child of about seven years would perform

about as well as a 10 year old white Australian child.

Not quite as well, but it's about a three year difference.

They also tend to perform these tasks

in even ways in terms of tempo.

They don't hurry and put a few back and then slow down.

They seem to perform at the same rate all the time

and they also don't mutter or mumble which a lot

of white Australian children have done while they were doing

the tasks, while thinking.

They fix to learn the names hoping that that would help them

to remember where the items went.

>> The two groups of children use different strategies

and perhaps different parts

of their brains to solve the puzzles.