Trends in Neuroscience and Education最新文献

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.

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

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic schools all over the world were closed and thereby students had to be instructed from distance. Consequently, the use of online learning environments for online distance learning increased massively. However, the perseverance of using online learning environments during and after school closures remains to be investigated.

Method

We examined German students’ (n ≈ 300,000 students; ≈ 18 million computed problem sets) engagement in an online learning environment for mathematics by means of survival analysis.

Results

We observed that the total number of students who registered increased considerably during and after school closures compared to the previous three years. Importantly, however, the proportion of students engaged also decreased more rapidly over time.

Conclusion

The application of survival analysis provided valuable insights into students’ engagement in online learning - or conversely students’ increased dropout rates - over time. Its application to educational settings allows to address a broader range of questions on students’ engagement in online learning environments in the future.

Background

Research with adults suggests that executive function (EF) might play a role in the development of divergent thinking, a key component of creativity, by helping children override canonical knowledge.

Procedure

We examined this possibility in two experiments, by manipulating the familiarity of objects used in the Alternate Uses test of divergent thinking both between-participants (Experiment 1: N = 53 4-year-olds and 50 6-year-olds) and within-participants (Experiment 2: N = 74 5-year-olds).

Findings

We found evidence that younger children generated more and/or more original ideas for novel than familiar objects. However, this effect disappeared with age and did not depend on child EF. Further, EF was inversely associated with divergent thinking, controlling for age, intelligence, and income.

Significance

These results call into question a simple executive account of children's divergent thinking and suggest that, among predominantly White, socioeconomically advantaged 4–6-year-olds, divergent idea-generation might be a primarily bottom-up process that can be hindered by top-down thinking.

Objective

People often perceive a quantity of specific objects that appear as part of an overall group of items (a subset). This study investigates this type of perception among a population with mathematical leaning difficulties (MLD).

Method

Sixty-two participants (mean age: 26.82) reported the general and subset quantity of items using a subset quantity detection task or a conjunction visual search task.

Results

MLD had difficulties perceiving both the general quantity presented and the subset quantity of items. They also had difficulties preforming a conjunction visual search task, even when the task did not involve numerical processing.

Conclusions

MLD has spatial difficulties in the form of visual search and subset quantity detection. The current study suggests that MLD might experience greater difficulties in daily tasks, which might be related to those tasks (e.g., detecting the amount of forks among other items of silverware on the table).

Background

Although breaks are essential to restoring cognitive and psychological conditions for learning, short breaks within school lessons are not established and the specificity of effects has not often been investigated. Therefore, the effects of a physical activity (Study 1) and a mindfulness intervention (Study 2) were investigated.

Procedure

By an intervention-control group design, the effects of daily 10-min physical activity (Study 1: N = 162, 4th grade) and mindfulness breaks (Study 2: N = 79, 5th grade) were implemented within regular school lessons over a 2-week time period to research the impact on attention, reading comprehension, and self-esteem.

Results

In the physical activity intervention children's attention improved (attention-processing speed: p < .004, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .05, attention-performance: p < .025, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .03), and in the mindfulness intervention reading comprehension improved (p < .012, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .08) compared to the controls. Results further indicated that self-esteem moderated the relationship between groups and attention improvement in study 1.

Conclusion

Classroom-based short physical and mindfulness breaks could support attention and reading comprehension, which are known to support overall academic success.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic induced many governments to close schools for months. Evidence so far suggests that learning has suffered as a result. Here, it is investigated whether forms of computer-assisted learning mitigated the decrements in learning observed during the lockdown.

Method

Performance of 53,656 primary school students who used adaptive practicing software for mathematics was compared to performance of similar students in the preceding year.

Results

During the lockdown progress was faster than it had been the year before, contradicting results reported so far. These enhanced gains were correlated with increased use, and remained after the lockdown ended. This was the case for all grades but more so for lower grades and for weak students, but less so for students in schools with disadvantaged populations.

Conclusions

These results suggest that adaptive practicing software may mitigate, or even reverse, the negative effects of school closures on mathematics learning.

We examined the relation between different kinds of play behavior (video games, exergames, board games) in kindergarten (T1) and components of executive function (EF; inhibition, switching, verbal and visuospatial updating) in kindergarten and second grade (T1 and T2). Ninety-seven children participated in this longitudinal study. Parents were asked to complete a questionnaire regarding children's play behavior, reporting frequency, duration, and game type. The results indicate that play behavior is associated with EF development in children; however, only exergames, electronic puzzle games, and board games predicted EF at T2. Additionally, the time spent on electronic games was negatively related to visuospatial updating at T1 but did not predict EF at T2. The results support further investigation of a potential link between board game and exergame play behavior and EF development.

Background

Policy makers have long considered how to best educate children for success. Thus, this research explored whether imaginative play serves as a positive context for developing executive functions (EF) and prosocial behaviors necessary for academic success. Specifically, we hypothesized that EF would explain links between imaginative play and prosocial behaviors.

Method

284 preschool children and their teachers completed measures of imaginative play, EF, and prosocial behaviors. Structural Equation Modeling examined mediational links between these constructs.

Results

Imaginative play predicted both hot and cool EF, as well as prosocial behavior, even after controlling for age and vocabulary; furthermore, the relationship between imaginative play and prosocial behavior was fully mediated by hot EF.

Conclusion

Results suggest that imaginative play may serve as a positive context for developing EF and prosocial behaviors. Curricula and teachers should consider encouraging imaginative play to facilitate the development of EF and prosocial behaviors.

Background

There is evidence indicating beneficial effects of mental simulation on athletic and musical performance. We evaluated whether such beneficial effects of mental simulation generalize to the cognitive domain in terms of embodied (finger-based) numerical representations.

Methods

We assessed 70 preschoolers (36 girls, mean age 5;9) on tasks assessing different basic numerical skills (e.g., counting, cardinality understanding, number composition, etc.) as well as different aspects of finger-based numerical representations. A subgroub completed a mental simulation phase prior to testing finger-based representations.

Results

Children who completed the mental simulation phase, performed better on the tasks assessing finger-based representations compared to, children who did not complete the simulation phase. This held even when controlling for performance in basic numerical skills.

Conclusion

This study provides evidence that beneficial effects of mental simulation generalize to embodied (finger-based) numerical representations. Mental simulation may be useful to integrate in the instruction of basic numerical skills.