The effects of gesture and action training on the retention of math equivalence.

Introduction: Hand gestures and actions-with-objects (hereafter 'actions') are both forms of movement that can promote learning. However, the two have unique affordances, which means that they have the potential to promote learning in different ways. Here we compare how children learn, and importantly retain, information after performing gestures, actions, or a combination of the two during instruction about mathematical equivalence. We also ask whether individual differences in children's understanding of mathematical equivalence (as assessed by spontaneous gesture before instruction) impacts the effects of gesture- and action-based instruction. Method: Across two studies, racially and ethnically diverse third and fourth-grade students (N=142) were given instruction about how to solve mathematical equivalence problems (eg., 2+9+4=__+4) as part of a pretest-training-posttest design. In Study 1, instruction involved teaching students to produce either actions or gestures. In Study 2, instruction involved teaching students to produce either actions followed by gestures or gestures followed by actions. Across both studies, speech and gesture produced during pretest explanations were coded and analyzed to measure individual differences in pretest understanding. Children completed written posttests immediately after instruction, as well as the following day, and four weeks later, to assess learning, generalization and retention. Results: In Study 1 we find that, regardless of individual differences in pre-test understanding of mathematical equivalence, children learn from both action and gesture, but gesture-based instruction promotes retention better than action-based instruction. In Study 2 we find an influence of individual differences: children who produced relatively few types of problem-solving strategies (as assessed by their pre-test gestures and speech) perform better when they receive action training before gesture training than when they receive gesture training first. In contrast, children who expressed many types of strategies, and thus had a more complex understanding of mathematical equivalence prior to instruction, performed equally with both orders. Discussion: These results demonstrate that action training, followed by gesture, can be a useful stepping-stone in the initial stages of learning mathematical equivalence, and that gesture training can help learners retain what they learn.

Gender similarities in the brain during mathematics development.

Some scientists and public figures have hypothesized that women and men differ in their pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) owing to biological differences in mathematics aptitude. However, little evidence supports such claims. Some studies of children and adults show gender differences in mathematics performance but in those studies it is impossible to disentangle intrinsic, biological differences from sociocultural influences. To investigate the early biology of mathematics and gender, we tested for gender differences in the neural processes of mathematics in young children. We measured 3-10-year-old children's neural development with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during naturalistic viewing of mathematics education videos. We implemented both frequentist and Bayesian analyses that quantify gender similarities and differences in neural processes. Across all analyses girls and boys showed significant gender similarities in neural functioning, indicating that boys and girls engage the same neural system during mathematics development.

Developing, mature, and unique functions of the child's brain in reading and mathematics.

Cognitive development research shows that children use basic "child-unique" strategies for reading and mathematics. This suggests that children's neural processes will differ qualitatively from those of adults during this developmental period. The goals of the current study were to 1) establish whether a within-subjects neural dissociation between reading and mathematics exists in early childhood as it does in adulthood, and 2) use a novel, developmental intersubject correlation method to test for "child-unique", developing, and adult-like patterns of neural activation within those networks. Across multiple tasks, children's reading and mathematics activity converged in prefrontal cortex, but dissociated in temporal and parietal cortices, showing similarities to the adult pattern of dissociation. "Child-unique" patterns of neural activity were observed in multiple regions, including the anterior temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyri, and showed "child-unique" profiles of functional connectivity to prefrontal cortex. This provides a new demonstration that "children are not just little adults" - the developing brain is not only quantitatively different from adults, it is also qualitatively different.

No intrinsic gender differences in children's earliest numerical abilities.

Recent public discussions have suggested that the under-representation of women in science and mathematics careers can be traced back to intrinsic differences in aptitude. However, true gender differences are difficult to assess because sociocultural influences enter at an early point in childhood. If these claims of intrinsic differences are true, then gender differences in quantitative and mathematical abilities should emerge early in human development. We examined cross-sectional gender differences in mathematical cognition from over 500 children aged 6 months to 8 years by compiling data from five published studies with unpublished data from longitudinal records. We targeted three key milestones of numerical development: numerosity perception, culturally trained counting, and formal and informal elementary mathematics concepts. In addition to testing for statistical differences between boys' and girls' mean performance and variability, we also tested for statistical equivalence between boys' and girls' performance. Across all stages of numerical development, analyses consistently revealed that boys and girls do not differ in early quantitative and mathematical ability. These findings indicate that boys and girls are equally equipped to reason about mathematics during early childhood.

Dorsal stream function in the young child: an fMRI investigation of visually guided action.

Visually guided action is a ubiquitous component of human behavior, but the neural substrates that support the development of this behavior are unknown. Here we take an initial step in documenting visual-motor system development in the young (4- to 7-year-old) child. Through functional MRI and by using a new technique to measure the mechanisms underlying real-time visually guided action in the MRI environment, we demonstrate that children rely primarily on the IPS and cerebellum for this complex behavior. This pattern is consistent across three different visually guided actions, suggesting generalizability of these neural substrates across such tasks. However, minor differences in neural processing across tasks were also demonstrated. Overall, results are interpreted as demonstrating that the functions of the dorsal stream can be viewed as fairly mature in the young child. These results provide a benchmark for future studies that aim to understand the development of the neural circuitry for visually guided action.

Neural Tuning to Numerosity Relates to Perceptual Tuning in 3-6-Year-Old Children.

Neural representations of approximate numerical value, or numerosity, have been observed in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) in monkeys and humans, including children. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that children as young as 3-4 years old exhibit neural tuning to cardinal numerosities in the IPS and that their neural responses are accounted for by a model of numerosity coding that has been used to explain neural responses in the adult IPS. We also found that the sensitivity of children's neural tuning to number in the right IPS was comparable to their numerical discrimination sensitivity observed behaviorally, outside of the scanner. Children's neural tuning curves in the right IPS were significantly sharper than in the left IPS, indicating that numerical representations are more precise and mature more rapidly in the right hemisphere than in the left. Further, we show that children's perceptual sensitivity to numerosity can be predicted by the development of their neural sensitivity to numerosity. This research provides novel evidence of developmental continuity in the neural code underlying numerical representation and demonstrates that children's neural sensitivity to numerosity is related to their cognitive development. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Here we test for the existence of neural tuning to numerosity in the developing brain in the youngest sample of children tested with fMRI to date. Although previous research shows evidence of numerical distance effects in the intraparietal sulcus of the developing brain, those effects could be explained by patterns of neural activity that do not represent neural tuning to numerosity. These data provide the first robust evidence that from as early as 3-4 years of age there is developmental continuity in how the intraparietal sulcus represents the values of numerosities. Moreover, the study goes beyond previous research by examining the relation between neural tuning and perceptual tuning in children.

Tracing trajectories of audio-visual learning in the infant brain.

Although infants begin learning about their environment before they are born, little is known about how the infant brain changes during learning. Here, we take the initial steps in documenting how the neural responses in the brain change as infants learn to associate audio and visual stimuli. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNRIS) to record hemodynamic responses in the infant cortex (temporal, occipital, and frontal cortex), we find that across the infant brain, learning is characterized by an increase in activation followed by a decrease. We take this U-shaped response as evidence of repetition enhancement during early stages of learning and repetition suppression during later stages, a result that mirrors the Hunter and Ames model of infant visual preference. Furthermore, we find that the neural response to violations of the learned associations can be predicted by the shape of the learning curve in temporal and occipital cortex. These data provide the first look at the shape of the neural response during audio-visual associative learning in infancy establishing that diverse regions of the infant brain exhibit systematic changes across the time-course of learning.

Primitive Concepts of Number and the Developing Human Brain.

Counting is an evolutionarily recent cultural invention of the human species. In order for humans to have conceived of counting in the first place, certain representational and logical abilities must have already been in place. The focus of this review is the origins and nature of those fundamental mechanisms that promoted the emergence of the human number concept. Five claims are presented that support an evolutionary view of numerical development: 1) number is an abstract concept with an innate basis in humans, 2) maturational processes constrain the development of humans' numerical representations between infancy and adulthood, 3) there is evolutionary continuity in the neural processes of numerical cognition in primates, 4) primitive logical abilities support verbal counting development in humans, and 5) primitive neural processes provide the foundation for symbolic numerical development in the human brain. We support these claims by examining current evidence from animal cognition, child development, and human brain function. The data show that at the basis of human numerical concepts are primitive perceptual and logical mechanisms that have evolutionary homologs in other primates and form the basis of numerical development in the human brain. In the final section of the review, we discuss some hypotheses for what makes human numerical reasoning unique by drawing on evidence from human and non-human primate neuroimaging research.

Development of Tool Representations in the Dorsal and Ventral Visual Object Processing Pathways.

Tools represent a special class of objects, because they are processed across both the dorsal and ventral visual object processing pathways. Three core regions are known to be involved in tool processing: the left posterior middle temporal gyrus, the medial fusiform gyrus (bilaterally), and the left inferior parietal lobule. A critical and relatively unexplored issue concerns whether, in development, tool preferences emerge at the same time and to a similar degree across all regions of the tool-processing network. To test this issue, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural amplitude, peak location, and the dispersion of tool-related neural responses in the youngest sample of children tested to date in this domain (ages 4-8 years). We show that children recruit overlapping regions of the adult tool-processing network and also exhibit similar patterns of co-activation across the network to adults. The amplitude and co-activation data show that the core components of the tool-processing network are established by age 4. Our findings on the distributions of peak location and dispersion of activation indicate that the tool network undergoes refinement between ages 4 and 8 years.

Brain activation patterns resulting from learning letter forms through active self-production and passive observation in young children.

Although previous literature suggests that writing practice facilitates neural specialization for letters, it is unclear if this facilitation is driven by the perceptual feedback from the act of writing or the actual execution of the motor act. The present study addresses this issue by measuring the change in BOLD signal in response to hand-printed letters, unlearned cursive letters, and cursive letters that 7-year-old children learned actively, by writing, and passively, by observing an experimenter write. Brain activation was assessed using fMRI while perceiving letters-in both cursive and manuscript forms. Results showed that active training led to increased recruitment of the sensori-motor network associated with letter perception as well as the insula and claustrum, but passive observation did not. This suggests that perceptual networks for newly learned cursive letters are driven by motor execution rather than by perceptual feedback.