Search

Understanding the cognitive processes central to mathematical development is crucial to addressing systemic inequities in math achievement. We investigate the "Groupitizing" ability in 1209 third to eighth graders (mean age at first timepoint = 10.48, 586 girls, 39.16% Asian, 28.88% Hispanic/Latino, 18.51% White), a process that captures the ability to use grouping cues to access the exact value of a set. Groupitizing improves each year from late childhood to early adolescence (d = 3.29), is a central predictor of math achievement (beta weight = .30), is linked to conceptual processes in mathematics (minimum d = 0.69), and helps explain the dynamic between the ongoing development of non-symbolic number concepts, systemic educational inequities in school associated with SES, and mathematics achievement (minimum beta weight = .11) in ways that explicit symbolic measures may miss. more...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, families have experienced unprecedented financial and social disruptions. We studied the impact of preexisting psychosocial factors and pandemic-related financial and social disruptions in relation to family well-being among N = 4091 adolescents and parents during early summer 2020, participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development more...

Parental knowledge/monitoring is negatively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms, suggesting monitoring could be a target for prevention and treatment. However, no study has rigorously addressed the possibility that this association is spurious, leaving the clinical and etiological implications unclear. The goal of this study was to conduct a more rigorous test of whether knowledge/monitoring is causally related to depressive symptoms. 7940 youth (ages 10.5–15.6 years, 49% female) at 21 sites across the U.S. completed measures of parental knowledge/monitoring and their own depressive symptoms at four waves 11–22 weeks apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, monitoring and depression were examined in standard, between-family regression models. Second, within-family changes in monitoring and depression between assessments were examined in first differenced regressions. Because the latter models control for stable, between-family differences, they comprise a stronger test of a causal relation. In standard, between-family models, parental monitoring and youths’ depressive symptoms were negatively associated (standardized \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\beta$$\end{document}β= −0.22, 95% CI = [−0.25, −0.20], p more...

Author(s): Stinson, Elizabeth A; Sullivan, Ryan M; Peteet, Bridgette J; Tapert, Susan F; Baker, Fiona C; Breslin, Florence J; Dick, Anthony S; Gonzalez, Marybel Robledo; Guillaume, Mathieu; Marshall, Andrew T; McCabe, Connor J; Pelham, William E; Van Rinsveld, Amandine M; Sheth, Chandni S; Sowell, Elizabeth R; Wade, Natasha E; Wallace, Alexander L; Lisdahl, Krista M | Abstract: BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, mental health among youth has been negatively impacted. Youth with a history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), as well as youth from minoritized racial-ethnic backgrounds, may be especially vulnerable to experiencing COVID-19-related distress. The current aims are to examine whether exposure to pre-pandemic ACEs predicts mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in youth and whether racial-ethnic background moderated these effects.MethodsFrom May to August 2020, 7,983 youth (Mage= 12.5, range= 10.6-14.6 years old) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development StudySM (ABCD Study®) completed at least one of three online surveys measuring the impact of the pandemic on their mental health. Data was evaluated in relation to youth's pre-pandemic mental health and ACEs.ResultsPre-pandemic ACE history significantly predicted poorer mental health (across all outcomes) and greater COVID-19-related stress and impact of fears on well-being. Youth reported improved mental health during the pandemic (from May to August 2020). While reporting similar levels of mental health, youth from minoritized racial-ethnic backgrounds had elevated COVID-19-related worry, stress, and impact on well-being. Race and ethnicity generally did not moderate ACE effects. Older youth, girls, and those with greater pre-pandemic internalizing symptoms also reported greater mental health symptoms.ConclusionsYouth who experienced greater childhood adversity reported greater negative affect and COVID-19-related distress during the pandemic. Although they reported generally better mood, Black, Asian American, and multiracial youth reported greater COVID-19-related worry and experienced COVID-19 related discrimination compared to non-Hispanic White youth, highlighting potential health disparities. more...

In the field of numerical cognition, researchers conventionally assess nonsymbolic numerical abilities with the help of number comparison tasks, in which participants need to compare two arrays. Many studies emphasized that visual (non-numerical) dimensions can serve as strategic cues and influence the decision on numerosity in these tasks. In this study, we suggest the use of a novel paradigm based on the change detection paradigm. Here, participants had to simultaneously pay attention to numerical changes and visual changes on a target non-numerical dimension (individual area, total area, field area, or density). Participants had to detect changes relative to the two dimensions and press response keys indicating either number change or visual change or press both keys. In such a double change detection paradigm, and unlike number comparison tasks, target and covarying dimensions cannot serve as cues to influence the numerical decision. We found that numerical change detection was excellent and stable across the conditions. Further, participants were more likely to falsely consider visual changes as numerical changes than the other way around. Lastly, when both dimensions varied, participants more frequently missed visual changes than numerical changes. Overall, our findings show that numerosity was the most salient visual dimension. From a methodological perspective, such a double change detection paradigm could be of critical interest to assess numerical abilities for future studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved). more...

Many studies have shown that parental knowledge/monitoring is correlated with adolescent substance use, but the association may be confounded by the many preexisting differences between families with low versus high monitoring. We attempted to produce more rigorous evidence for a causal relation using a longitudinal design that took advantage of within-family fluctuations in knowledge/monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic.Youth (Youth initially denying substance use were significantly more likely to start reporting use when they experienced a decrease in the level of perceived knowledge/monitoring (relative risk [RR] = 1.18,In a large, sociodemographically diverse sample, within-family changes in youth-perceived parental knowledge/monitoring over time were robustly associated with changes in youths' engagement in substance use. Findings lend support to the hypothesis that parent knowledge/monitoring is causally related to substance involvement in early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved). more...

Purpose Evaluate changes in early adolescent substance use during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic using a prospective, longitudinal, nationwide cohort. Methods Participants were enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. A total of 7,842 youth (mean age = 12.4 years, range = 10.5–14.6) at 21 study sites across the U.S. completed a three-wave assessment of substance use between May and August 2020. Youth reported whether they had used alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, or other substances in the past 30 days. Data were linked to prepandemic surveys that the same youth had completed in the years 2018–2020, before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results Past-30-day substance use remained stable in the 6 months since stay-at-home orders were first issued in U.S. states/counties; was primarily episodic (1–2 days in the past month); and was typically limited to a single substance. Using pretest/posttest and age-period designs, we found that compared to before the pandemic, fewer youth were using alcohol and more youth were using nicotine or misusing prescription drugs. During the pandemic, youth were more likely to use substances when they were more stressed by pandemic-related uncertainty; their family experienced material hardship; their parents used alcohol or drugs; or they experienced greater depression or anxiety. Neither engagement in social distancing nor worry about COVID-19 infection was associated with substance use. Several risk factors were stronger among older (vs. younger) adolescents. Conclusions Among youth in early adolescence, advent of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with decreased use of alcohol and increased use of nicotine and misuse of prescription drugs. more...

Humans possess a numerical intuition that allows them to manipulate large non-symbolic quantities. This ability has been broadly assessed with the help of number comparison tasks involving simultaneously displayed arrays. Many authors pointed out that the manipulation (or the lack thereof) of non-numerical features deeply impacts performance in these tasks, but the specific nature of this influence is not clear. The current study investigates the interaction between numerical and non-numerical quantity judgment tasks. Adult participants performed five distinct comparison tasks, each based on a target dimension: numerosity, total area, dot size, convex hull, and mean occupancy. We manipulated the relation between the target and the other dimensions to measure their respective influence on task performance. Results showed that total area and convex hull substantially affected numerosity comparisons. The number of dots conversely acted as an informative dimension when participants had to make a decision based on the total area or the convex hull. Our results illustrate that adults flexibly use non-target dimensions as visual cues to perform comparison judgments. Overall, this suggests that the influence found in numerical comparison tasks is explicit and deliberate rather than due to implicit visual integration processes., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Basic numerical abilities are generally assumed to influence more complex cognitive processes involving numbers, such as mathematics. Yet measuring non-symbolic number abilities remains challenging due to the intrinsic correlation between numerical and non-numerical dimensions of any visual scene. Several methods have been developed to generate non-symbolic stimuli controlling for the latter aspects but they tend to be difficult to replicate or implement. In this study, we describe the NASCO method, which is an extension to the method popularized by Dehaene, Izard, and Piazza (2005). Their procedure originally controlled for two visual dimensions that are mediated by Number: Total Area and Item Size (i.e., N = TA/IS). Here, we additionally propose to control for another twofold dimension related to the array extent, which is also mediated by Number: Convex Hull Area and Mean Occupancy (i.e., N = CH/MO). We illustrate the NASCO method with a MATLAB app—NASCO app—that allows easy generation of dot arrays for a visually controlled assessment of non-symbolic numerical abilities. Results from a numerical comparison task revealed that the introduction of this twofold dimension manipulation substantially affected young adults’ performance. In particular, we did not replicate the relation between non-symbolic number abilities and arithmetic skills. Our findings open the debate about the reliability of previous results that did not take into account visual features related to the array extent. We then discuss the strengths of NASCO method to assess numerical ability, as well as the benefits of its straightforward implementation in NASCO app for researchers. more...

Fluency in mental arithmetic is regarded as a foundational math skill best measured as a single construct. Here we examine the benefits of distinguishing between standard and non-standard arithmetic problems in elementary and middle school students. Depending on the problem at hand, a student’s fluency may reflect reliance on fact retrieval versus computational processes. We used an accelerated longitudinal-design to study single-digit arithmetic problems that appear in a widely used 3-minute math fluency assessment across a large (n=914), diverse cohort of 3rd-8th grade students (ages 7-13 years). A novel tablet-based paradigm enabled us to aggregate performance across different problem types by labeling problems as belonging to the standard set of problems versus non-standard problems, typically excluded from research studies. Effects of problem class were evident across accuracy, response time, and combined responses per minute (RPM) metrics. The development of fluency with both classes of problems continued throughout the grade levels studied. The development of both types of problem showed sensitivity to grade effects, SES effects, and classroom context. Finally, we propose that differentiating inferential from recognition fluency is an initial step toward testing a proposed SIRPA (shift from inferential to recognition processes in arithmetic) model of mental arithmetic development. more...

How humans integrate and abstract numerical information across different formats is one of the most debated questions in human cognition. We addressed the neuronal signatures of the numerical integration using an EEG technique tagged at the frequency of visual stimulation. In an oddball design, participants were stimulated with standard sequences of numbers ( 5) was inserted at 1.25 Hz. We observed significant oddball amplitudes for all single notations, showing for the first time using this EEG technique, that the magnitude information is spontaneously and unintentionally abstracted, irrespectively of the numerical format. Significant amplitudes were also observed for digits-number words and number words-dots, but not for digits-dots, suggesting an automatic integration across some numerical formats. These results imply that direct and indirect neuro-cognitive links exist across the different numerical formats. ispartof: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS vol:11 issue:1 ispartof: location:England status: published more...

Learning how to count is a crucial step in cognitive development, which progressively allows for more elaborate numerical processing. The existing body of research consistently reports how children associate the verbal code with exact quantity. However, the early acquisition of this code, when the verbal numbers are encoded in long-term memory as a sequence of words, has rarely been examined. Using an incidental assessment method based on serial recall of number words presented in ordered versus non-ordered sequences (e.g. one-two-three vs. two-one-three), we tracked the progressive acquisition of the verbal number sequence in children aged 3–6 years. Results revealed evidence for verbal number sequence knowledge in the youngest children even before counting is fully mastered. Verbal numerical knowledge thus starts to be organized as a sequence in long-term memory already at the age of 3 years, and this numerical sequence knowledge is assessed in a sensitive manner by incidental rather than explicit measures of number knowledge., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Groupitizing – the ability to take advantage of grouping cues to rapidly enumerate sets that otherwise require serial counting – is linked to conceptual aspects of numbers (accessing the cardinality of subgroups) and math (combining the subgroups values) that rapidly emerge during the first years of schooling (Starkey & McCandliss, 2014). Little else is known about its broader role in mathematical development. This study followed the development of groupitizing skill from late childhood through early adolescence (N = 1,209), revealing a pattern of progressive development over these critical years for math achievement. Individual differences were highly predictive of global math achievement from 3rd to 8th grade, above and beyond socioeconomic and cognitive (domain-general and math-specific) predictors. Experimental manipulations of item grouping cues (number of subgroups, numerical composition of subgroups) lead to similar effects that manipulations of operands have on symbolic mathematical reasoning, corroborating the view that groupitizing draws upon the same conceptual processes as symbolic math even in the absence of well-learned symbolic retrieval cues. Finally, we show that groupitizing provides new cognitive insights into the nature of the socioeconomic status achievement gap, which cannot be fully explained by familiarity with specific symbolic math facts learned in school but rather suggest inequities in educational opportunities that promote flexible mastery of conceptual processes. Taken together, groupitizing – as a non-symbolic assessment of conceptual processes in mathematics – could be a critical tool in implicitly assessing math ability. more...

Number transcoding is the cognitive task of converting between different numerical codes (i.e. visual “42”, verbal “forty-two”). Visual symbolic to verbal transcoding and vice versa strongly relies on language proficiency. We evaluated transcoding of German-French bilinguals from Luxembourg in 5th, 8th, 11th graders and adults. In the Luxembourgish educational system, children acquire mathematics in German (LM1) until the 7th grade, and then the language of learning mathematic switches to French (LM2). French `70s `80s `90s are less transparent than `30s `40s `50s numbers, since they have a base-20 structure, which is not the case in German. Transcoding was evaluated with a reading aloud and a verbal-visual number matching task. Results of both tasks show a cognitive cost for transcoding numbers having a base-20 structure (i.e. `70s, `80s and `90s), such that response times were slower in all age groups. Furthermore, considering only base-10 numbers (i.e. `30s `40s `50s), it appeared that transcoding in LM2 (French) also entailed a cost. While participants across age groups tended to read numbers slower in LM2, this effect was limited to the youngest age group in the matching task. In addition, participants made more errors when reading LM2 numbers. In conclusion, we observed an age-independent language effect with numbers having a base-20 structure in French, reflecting their reduced transparency with respect to the decimal system. Moreover, we find an effect of language of math acquisition such that transcoding is less well mastered in LM2. This effect tended to persist until adulthood in the reading aloud task, while in the matching task performance both languages become similar in older adolescents and young adults. This study supports the link between numbers and language, especially highlighting the impact of language on reading numbers aloud from childhood to adulthood. more...

Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with larger COVID-19 disease burdens and pandemic-related economic impacts. We utilized the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to understand how family- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage relate to disease burden, family communication, and preventative responses to the pandemic in over 6,000 youth-parent/caregiver dyads. Data were collected at three timepoints (May to August 2020). Here, we show that both family- and neighborhood-level disadvantage were associated with parents’ reports of greater family COVID-19 exposure risk and diagnoses, less perceived exposure risk, more frequent parent-youth conversations about COVID-19 risk/prevention and reassurance, and greater youth preventative behaviors. More disadvantaged families may be adaptively incorporating more protective strategies to reduce emotional distress and likelihood of COVID-19 infection. The results highlight the importance of parent-youth communication and disease-preventative practices for buffering the economic and disease burdens of COVID-19, along with policies and programs that reduce these burdens for families with socioeconomic disadvantage. more...

Our study characterized associations between three indicators of COVID-19's community-level impact in 20 geographically diverse metropolitan regions and how worried youth and their caregivers in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ Study have been about COVID-19. County-level COVID-19 case/death rates and monthly unemployment rates were geocoded to participants' addresses. Caregivers' (vs. youths') COVID-19-related worry was more strongly associated with COVID-19's community impact, independent of sociodemographics and pre-pandemic anxiety levels, with these associations varying by location. Public-health agencies and healthcare providers should avoid adopting uniform "one-size-fits-all" approaches to addressing COVID-19-related emotional distress and must consider specific communities' needs, challenges, and strengths. more...

Humans and other animal species are endowed with the ability to sense, represent, and mentally manipulate the number of items in a set without needing to count them. One central hypothesis is that this ability relies on an automated functional system dedicated to numerosity, the perception of the discrete numerical magnitude of a set of items. This system has classically been associated with intraparietal regions, however accumulating evidence in favor of an early visual number sense calls into question the functional role of parietal regions in numerosity processing. Targeting specifically numerosity among other visual features in the earliest stages of processing requires high temporal and spatial resolution. We used frequency-tagged magnetoencephalography to investigate the early automatic processing of numerical magnitudes and measured the steady-state brain responses specifically evoked by numerical and other visual changes in the visual scene. The neuromagnetic responses showed implicit discrimination of numerosity, total occupied area, and convex hull. The source reconstruction corresponding to the implicit discrimination responses showed common and separate sources along the ventral and dorsal visual pathways. Occipital sources attested the perceptual salience of numerosity similarly to both other implicitly discriminable visual features. Crucially, we found parietal responses uniquely associated with numerosity discrimination, showing automatic processing of numerosity in the parietal cortex, even when not relevant to the task. Taken together, these results provide further insights into the functional roles of parietal and occipital regions in numerosity encoding along the visual hierarchy., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Significance Approximating large quantities has been identified as a building block of mathematical cognition. Despite its importance from both a fundamental and an educational perspective, the mechanism behind this ability is still not fully understood. The remaining gap comes from the fact that a set is not only characterized by its number of objects but additionally by nonnumerical features naturally correlating with numerosity (e.g., a more numerous set occupies a larger surface). The current frequency-tagging EEG paradigm isolates specific responses to number and to nonnumerical dimensions. We demonstrate that when numerosity and the other dimensions are totally decorrelated in stimulus sequences, changes of each are automatically discriminated in early visual cortex, highlighting the status of numerosity as a primary visual feature., The ability to handle approximate quantities, or number sense, has been recurrently linked to mathematical skills, although the nature of the mechanism allowing to extract numerical information (i.e., numerosity) from environmental stimuli is still debated. A set of objects is indeed not only characterized by its numerosity but also by other features, such as the summed area occupied by the elements, which often covary with numerosity. These intrinsic relations between numerosity and nonnumerical magnitudes led some authors to argue that numerosity is not independently processed but extracted through a weighting of continuous magnitudes. This view cannot be properly tested through classic behavioral and neuroimaging approaches due to these intrinsic correlations. The current study used a frequency-tagging EEG approach to separately measure responses to numerosity as well as to continuous magnitudes. We recorded occipital responses to numerosity, total area, and convex hull changes but not to density and dot size. We additionally applied a model predicting primary visual cortex responses to the set of stimuli. The model output was closely aligned with our electrophysiological data, since it predicted discrimination only for numerosity, total area, and convex hull. Our findings thus demonstrate that numerosity can be independently processed at an early stage in the visual cortex, even when completely isolated from other magnitude changes. The similar implicit discrimination for numerosity as for some continuous magnitudes, which correspond to basic visual percepts, shows that both can be extracted independently, hence substantiating the nature of numerosity as a primary feature of the visual scene. more...

International audience; Fingers have been recurrently associated with number development and mathematical achievement. Specifically finger gnosis have been considered as a potential precursor of numerical learning. However recent findings cast doubt on the existence of a link between finger gnosis and numerical skills. In fact, finger gnosis and canonical finger representations are both different aspects that could influence numerical development but have not been distinguished in previous research. The current study aimed at dissociating the specific contribution of both aspects in a longitudinal setting. Children were tested twice: at the end of kindergarten and nine months later, in first grade. We used two specific finger tasks a finger gnosis task and a rapid-automatized-naming of finger numeral configurations (finger RAN). Numerical representation was assessed by number line estimations in kindergarten and first grade. Results showed that finger gnosis were not related to numerical representation accuracy at any time point. Finger RAN performances though were uniquely related to the numerical representation accuracy one year later, even out of the range of finger counting. The visual recognition of numbers as supported by finger configuration thus seems to be important when fingers support numerical representations. The present findings have theoretical implications about the link between fingers and number(s) across development. more...

Arabic digits (1–9) are everywhere in our daily lives. These symbols convey various semantic information, and numerate adults can easily extract from them several numerical features such as magnitude and parity. Nonetheless, since most studies used active processing tasks to assess these properties, it remains unclear whether and to what degree the access to magnitude and especially to parity is automatic. Here we investigated with EEG whether spontaneous processing of magnitude or parity can be recorded in a frequency-tagging approach, in which participants are passively stimulated by fast visual sequences of Arabic digits. We assessed automatic magnitude processing by presenting a stream of frequent small digit numbers mixed with deviant large digits (and the reverse) with a sinusoidal contrast modulation at the frequency of 10 Hz. We used the same paradigm to investigate numerical parity processing, contrasting odd digits to even digits. We found significant brain responses at the frequency of the fluctuating change and its harmonics, recorded on electrodes encompassing right occipitoparietal regions, in both conditions. Our findings indicate that both magnitude and parity are spontaneously and unintentionally extracted from Arabic digits, which supports that they are salient semantic features deeply associated to digit symbols in long-term memory., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Arabic digits (1-9) are everywhere in our daily lives. These symbols convey various semantic information, and numerate adults can easily extract from them several numerical features such as magnitude and parity. Nonetheless, since most studies used active processing tasks to assess these properties, it remains unclear whether and to what degree the access to magnitude and especially to parity is automatic. Here we investigated with EEG whether spontaneous processing of magnitude or parity can be recorded in a frequency-tagging approach, in which participants are passively stimulated by fast visual sequences of Arabic digits. We assessed automatic magnitude processing by presenting a stream of frequent small digit numbers mixed with deviant large digits (and the reverse) with a sinusoidal contrast modulation at the frequency of 10 Hz. We used the same paradigm to investigate numerical parity processing, contrasting odd digits to even digits. We found significant brain responses at the frequency of the fluctuating change and its harmonics, recorded on electrodes encompassing right occipitoparietal regions, in both conditions. Our findings indicate that both magnitude and parity are spontaneously and unintentionally extracted from Arabic digits, which supports that they are salient semantic features deeply associated to digit symbols in long-term memory. more...

The linguistic structure of number words can influence performance in basic numerical tasks such as mental calculation, magnitude comparison, and transcoding. Especially the presence of ten-unit inversion in number words seems to affect number processing. Thus, at the beginning of formal math education, young children speaking inverted languages tend to make relatively more errors in transcoding. However, it remains unknown whether and how inversion affects transcoding in older children and adults. Here we addressed this question by assessing two-digit number transcoding in adults and fourth graders speaking French and German, that is, using non-inverted and inverted number words, respectively. We developed a novel transcoding paradigm during which participants listened to two-digit numbers and identified the heard number among four Arabic numbers. Critically, the order of appearance of units and tens in Arabic numbers was manipulated mimicking the “units-first” and “tens-first” order of German and French. In a third “simultaneous” condition, tens and units appeared at the same time in an ecological manner. Although language did not affect overall transcoding speed in adults, we observed that German-speaking fourth graders were globally slower than their French-speaking peers, including in the “simultaneous” condition. Moreover, French-speaking children were faster in transcoding when the order of digit appearance was congruent with their number-word system (i.e. “tens-first” condition) while German-speaking children appeared to be similarly fast in the “units-first” and “tens-first” conditions. These findings indicate that inverted languages still impose a cognitive cost on number transcoding in fourth graders, which seems to disappear by adulthood. They underline the importance of language in numerical cognition and suggest that language should be taken into account during mathematics education., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

The ability to handle approximate quantities, or number sense, has been recurrently linked to mathematical skills, though the nature of the mechanism allowing to extract numerical information (i.e., numerosity) from environmental stimuli is still debated. A set of objects is indeed not only characterized by its numerosity but also by other features, such as the summed area occupied by the elements, which often covary with numerosity. These intrinsic relations between numerosity and non-numerical magnitudes led some authors to argue that numerosity is not independently processed but extracted through a weighting of continuous magnitudes. This view cannot be properly tested through classic behavioral and neuroimaging approaches due to these intrinsic correlations. The current study used a frequency-tagging EEG approach to separately measure responses to numerosity as well as to continuous magnitudes. We recorded occipital responses to numerosity, total area, and convex hull changes but not to density and dot size. We additionally applied a model predicting primary visual cortex responses to the set of stimuli. The model output was closely aligned with our electrophysiological data, since it predicted discrimination only for numerosity, total area, and convex hull. Our findings thus demonstrate that numerosity can be independently processed at an early stage in the visual cortex, even when completely isolated from other magnitude changes. The similar implicit discrimination for numerosity as for some continuous magnitudes, which correspond to basic visual percepts, shows that both can be extracted independently, hence substantiating the nature of numerosity as a primary feature of the visual scene. more...

Learning mathematics in a second language is a challenge for many learners. The purpose of the study was to provide new insights into the role of the language context in mathematic learning and more particularly arithmetic problem solving. We investigated this question in a German–French bilingual educational setting in Luxembourg. Participants with increasing bilingual proficiency levels were invited to solve additions in both their first and second instruction languages: German and French. Arithmetic problems were presented in two different conditions: preceded by a semantic judgment or without additional language context. In the French session we observed that additions were systematically performed faster in the condition with an additional language context. In contrast no effect of the context was observed in the German session. In conclusion, providing a language context enhanced arithmetic performances in bilinguals' second instruction language. This finding entails implications for designing optimal mathematic learning environments in multilingual educational settings. more...

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Since more than 15 years, researchers have been expressing their interest in evaluating the Approximate Number System (ANS) and its potential influence on cognitive skills involving number processing, such as arithmetic. Although many studies reported significant and predictive relations between ANS and arithmetic abilities, there has recently been an increasing amount of published data that failed to replicate such relationship. Inconsistencies lead many researchers to question the validity of the assessment of the ANS itself. In the current meta-analysis of over 68 experimental studies published between 2004 and 2017, we show that the mean value of the Weber fraction (w), the minimal amount of change in magnitude to detect a difference, is very heterogeneous across the literature. Within young adults, w might range from < 10 to more than 60, which is critical for its validity for research and diagnostic purposes. We illustrate here the concern that different methods controlling for non-numerical dimensions lead to substantially variable performance. Nevertheless, studies that referred to the exact same method (e.g. Panamath) showed high consistency among them, which is reassuring. We are thus encouraging researchers only to compare what is comparable and to avoid considering the Weber fraction as an abstract parameter independent from the context. Eventually, we observed that all reported correlation coefficients between the value of w and general accuracy were very high. Such result calls into question the relevance of computing and reporting at all the Weber fraction. We are thus in disfavor of the systematic use of the Weber fraction, to discourage any temptation to compare given data to some values of w reported from different tasks and generation algorithms., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...