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Gender differences in math-related professional achievements have been identified as a worldwide problem. Academic achievement assessments, however, have repeatedly revealed gender similarities. The observed gender similarity might be due to biased assessments that heavily rely on reading skills, which favors girls. The current study analyzed 29 international and within-country datasets representing a total of 9,471,692 students from 1,456 regions through four typical, large-scale student academic achievement assessments. The results showed a gender difference in mathematics achievements of greater than 0.76 (Cohen's d), favoring boys for each dataset after controlling for general reading achievements. The gender difference in mathematics achievements favoring boys exceeded 0.35 in each region, with a mean of 0.70 for 79 countries or jurisdictions in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2018) after controlling for general reading achievements. Dataset- and region-level gender differences are robust, suggesting that there is a clear gender difference in mathematics achievements that previous analyses have not identified due to the effect of reading achievements differences.

Although neuropsychological studies have demonstrated specific cognitive impairments in children with childhood absence epilepsy (CAE), the potential role of the frontal lobe in these cognitive deficits remains unclear. We therefore evaluated cognitive functions related to and unrelated to the functionality of the frontal lobe in childhood absence epilepsy patients and control subjects. Thirty-seven childhood absence epilepsy patients and 37 age- and gender-matched healthy control subjects were recruited and assessed using a computerized neuropsychological test battery. Childhood absence epilepsy patients, especially a drug-naïve subgroup, showed cognitive deficits in reasoning, visual attention, and executive function, which are typical cognitive functions of the frontal lobe. In contrast, treated childhood absence epilepsy patients only exhibited cognitive deficits in visual attention. There were no significant between-group differences for other cognitive tests. Our findings suggest that frontal lobe–related cognitive deficits represent the characteristic neuropsychological profile associated with childhood absence epilepsy.

Mathematical learning difficulty (MLD) is prevalent in the development of mathematical abilities. Previous interventions for children with MLD have focused on number sense or basic mathematical skills. This study investigated whether mathematical performance of fifth grade children with MLD could be improved by developing knowledge structures by testing using a web-based curriculum learning system. A total of 142 children with MLD were recruited; half of the children were in the experimental group (using the system), and the other half were in the control group (not using the system). The children were encouraged to use the web-based learning system at home for at least a 15-min session, at least once a week, for one and a half months. The mean accumulated time of testing on the system for children in the experimental group was 56.2 min. Children in the experimental group had significantly higher scores on their final mathematical examination compared to the control group. The results suggest that web-based curriculum learning through testing that promotes the building of knowledge structures for a mathematical course was helpful for children with MLD.

There are three main hypotheses about mental representations of arithmetic facts: the independent representation hypothesis, the operand-order-free single-representation hypothesis, and the operand-order-specific single-representation hypothesis. The current study used electrical recordings of eye movements to examine the organization of arithmetic facts in long-term memory. Subjects were presented single-digit addition and multiplication problems and were asked to report the solutions. Analyses of the horizontal electrooculograph (HEOG) showed an operand order effect for multiplication in the time windows 150-300 ms (larger negative potentials for smaller operand first problems than for larger operand first ones). The operand order effect was reversed in the time windows from 400 to 1,000 ms (i.e., larger operand first problems had larger negative potentials than smaller operand first problems). For addition, larger operand first problems had larger negative potentials than smaller operand first in the series of time windows from 300 to 1,000 ms, but the effect was smaller than that for multiplication. These results confirmed the dissociated representation of addition and multiplication facts and were consistent with the prediction of the preferred operand-order-specific representation hypothesis. © 2012 The Experimental Psychology Society.

Studies have shown that female children, on average, consistently outperform male children in arithmetic. In the research reported here, 1,556 pupils (8 to 11 years of age) from urban and rural regions in the greater Beijing area completed 10 cognitive tasks. Results showed that girls outperformed boys in arithmetic tasks (i.e., simple subtraction, complex multiplication), as well as in numerosity-comparison, number-comparison, number-series-completion, choice reaction time, and word-rhyming tasks. Boys outperformed girls in a mental rotation task. Controlling for scores on the word-rhyming task eliminated gender differences in arithmetic, whereas controlling for scores on numerical-processing tasks (number comparison, numerosity estimation, numerosity comparison, and number-series completion) and general cognitive tasks (choice reaction time, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and mental rotation) did not. These results suggest that girls' advantage in arithmetic is likely due to their advantage in language processing. © The Author(s) 2012.