Trends in Neuroscience and Education最新文献

Understanding how children acquire mathematical abilities is fundamental to planning mathematical schooling. This study focuses on the relationships between mathematical cognition, cognition in general and neural foundation in 8 to 9-year-old children. We used additive mathematics tests, cognitive tests determining the tendency for proactive and reactive problem solving and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for functional brain imaging. The ability to engage in proactive control had a stronger association with mathematical performance than other cognitive abilities, such as processing speed, sustained attention and pattern recognition. The fNIRS method identified differences between proactive and reactive control, i.e., the more proactive the children were, the greater the increase in oxygenated hemoglobin in the left lateral prefrontal cortex during reactive beneficiary situations. During a text-based task involving additive reasoning, increased activity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex was detected compared to a similar task with supportive spatial-geometric information.

Background

Children's executive functions develop rapidly during the preschool years and are critical for attending to lessons and meeting classroom expectations. Engaging in periods of outdoor play that have lower regulatory requirements and that provide opportunities for physical activity may help children maintain control over their behavior when they are back in settings with higher regulatory requirements. However, little work has formally examined this proposition in early childhood.

Methods

This study used a quasi-experimental design to examine preschoolers' executive functions following indoor compared to outdoor play. A total of 72 children (mean age = 4.5 years, 46% female, 73% non-Hispanic White) participated in task-based assessments of attention shifting and inhibitory control and in classroom observations of attention and inhibitory control. A subsample of the children (n = 51) was assessed for physical activity using accelerometry to examine the extent to which young children's physical activity during outdoor play predicted their subsequent executive functions better than their physical activity during indoor play.

Results

Children showed greater attention during classroom circle time following outdoor play compared to after indoor play (d = .34). Children's non-sedentary activity during indoor play was not related to their subsequent task-based executive functions but showed negative associations with their subsequent classroom-based executive functions. Children's percentage of time spent in non-sedentary physical activity during outdoor play showed a quadratic association with subsequent task-based inhibitory control but linear associations with subsequent classroom-based attention and inhibitory control during circle time.

Conclusion

Periods of outdoor play that involve recommended amounts of physical activity may help young children engage executive functions when they return to the classroom.

Described as the ability to begin solving a problem in one way and then to shift to another strategy efficiently according to the new demands, cognitive flexibility (CF) can be associated, like other executive functions (EF), to math performance. However, CF is not yet a systematically reviewed component of EF in relation to math outcomes. As an effort to better understand the data available, a meta-analysis of random effects with 23 studies including children (N=35.355; M age=5,8; 46% male) was conducted, using for search the databases Scopus, Science Direct, PsycARTICLES, SciELO and also lists of references. Results showed that CF and math are related, with a moderate heterogeneity and significant weighted effect size (r=0,35; Q=67,82; p=0,01; I² = 57, 24%). The results of different types of mathematics skills showed similar effects (general math r = 0,35; conceptual math r=0,34; procedural math r=0,33). Correlational and univariate analysis of variance data showed that age negatively impacts the magnitude of the overall correlation between CF and math, indicating that in younger children mathematics performance is more strongly impacted by cognitive flexibility (r=0,40; p=0,05). Thus, the assumption that CF have an important influence on mathematical performance is supported, especially in younger children, which indicates that cognitive assessment of CF in educational settings from early childhood can help guide important actions, as by knowing these underlying skills implicated in math performance interventions can focus on them aiming to improve math skills.

This study assessed the effectiveness of an executive function training programme aiming at reducing the behavioural and emotional problems of 87 minors, aged between 8 and 17, in residential care within the Spanish foster care system. Participants’ executive functions were assessed with the Spanish adaptation of the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF®2). For the assessment of their emotional and behavioural problems, the Spanish adaptation of the Assessment System for Children and Adolescents (SENA) was used. The results revealed an improvement in initiative and task supervision. After the intervention, the minors reported having fewer problems with their classmates and fewer symptoms related to traumatic events. According to the educators, those minors also presented better integration and social skills, a greater willingness to study, less isolation, less symptoms of depression, fewer emotional problems and a higher level and variety of personal resources.

Background: Adolescence is a sensitive period in motor development but little is known about how long-term learning dependent processes shape hand function in tasks of different complexity.

Procedure: We mapped two fundamental aspects of hand function: simple repetitive and complex sequential finger movements, as a function of the length of musical instrumental training. We controlled maturational factors such as chronological and biological age of adolescent female participants (11 to 15 years of age, n = 114).

Results: We demonstrated that experience improves performance as a function of task complexity, the more complex task being more susceptible for experience driven performance changes.

Conclusion: Overall, these results suggest that fine motor skills involving cognitive control and relying on long-range functional brain networks are substantially shaped by experience. On the other hand, performance in a simple repetitive task that explains fine motor speed is primarily determined by white matter development driven by maturational factors.

Background

Spaced learning produces better learning performance than extended learning periods without or with little interruptions. This “spacing effect” exists on different time scales, ranging from seconds to months. We recently found large spacing effects with a hitherto rarely investigated 12-hours spacing interval.

Methods

The present study tested for potentially larger learning effects in the temporal vicinity of 12 h and analyzed spacing effects separately for learning and forgetting.

102 participants learned 40 German-Japanese vocabulary pairs in separate conditions with 7.5 min and 4-, 8-, 12-, and 24-hours spacing intervals. Two final tests were executed after retention intervals of 24 h and 7 days.

The 7.5-min spacing interval produced a steeper initial learning curve than all other spacing intervals. 24 h after the last learning unit, we found almost no forgetting in the 4-, 8- and 12-hours spacing conditions, but about 9.3% and 3.6% forgetting in the 7.5 min and 24 h spacing conditions. After 7 days, forgetting was in the range of 13% for all conditions between 4 and 24 h. The 7.5 min condition produced 34% forgetting.

Results and conclusion

Our results indicate that spacing intervals in the range of 8 h ± 4 h provide high learning performance and can be easily integrated in our daily schedules.

Background

It is unclear how cognitive control accounts for academic performance in math-intensive higher education and how it links to male over-representation in math-intensive education in gender-inequitable countries.

Purpose

To examine the link between cognitive control and math-intensive education with a focus on male overrepresentation by using cognitive performance (task and construct level) to account for academic grades, and examining sex-specificity in cognitive performance (task and construct level), and using sex-differences in cognitive performance to account for academic grades.

Results

Four hierarchical regressions were used (two using task scores and two summed scores) with predictors entered in 3 blocks (working memory, flexibility, inhibition) to explain academic performance (bootstrapped sampling at 2000 samples; N = 39; males =69%). Task-level analysis (Corsi span & mental rotation) and construct-level analysis indicate working memory as a significant predictor of grades, model-fit improved for all-male sample. Results of analysis of variance using the performance of 183 students on four cognitive tasks (N = 183; males = 81%) showed high scores of working memory task and decision-making task among male participants; female scores were higher in a task assessing planning/cognitive flexibility and in the inhibition task. Differences in the two hierarchical regressions indicated that planning/cognitive flexibility accounts for the academic performance of the male-female mixed sample; however, working memory, most importantly decision-making related to risk and uncertainty, accounts for the academic performance of the all-male sample.

Conclusion

Similar to developing countries, working memory and decision making might contribute to academic performance, potentially explaining male over-representation in math-intensive higher education. Academic grades might disproportionately rely on working memory and risky decision-making; equal emphasis and inclusive development of all components of cognitive control via academic curriculum and assessment might improve diversity in math-intensive higher education.

Background

Despite the relevance of basic numerical skills to later mathematical outcomes, there remains little consensus on which skills comprise the construct of early numeracy.

Procedure

Here, we evaluate recent studies that investigated this construct using various approaches.

Main findings

Findings from these studies indicated broad consensus in considering skills such as counting, number relations, and basic arithmetic, as central aspects of early numeracy. However, both the number and contents of identified factors varied considerably across studies.

Conclusions

Although this review substantiated the critical relevance of certain basic numerical skills, it also highlights a need for future research to evaluate the structure of early numeracy in a more systematic and coordinated way to increase comparability and coherence across studies.