The Neural Organization of Quantitative Concepts in Early Childhood

幼儿期定量概念的神经组织

• 批准号: 7862115
• 负责人: Jessica F Cantlon
• 金额: $ 31.31万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-04-01 至 2015-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7862115
• 关键词: 8 year old; Adult; Affect; Age; Age-Months; Behavioral; Binding; Biological; Brain; Brain imaging; Brain region; Child; Cognition; Cognitive; Color; Complex; Data; Development; Digit structure; Disease; Dissociation; Education; Elderly; Foundations; Fragile X Syndrome; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Hereditary Disease; Impairment; Infant; Intelligence; Jordan; Judgment; Knowledge; Learning; Life; Link; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Mathematics; Measures; Methods; Neurophysiology - biologic function; Numerical value; Nursery Schools; Pattern; Performance; Play; Preschool Child; Procedures; Process; Property; Psyche structure; Psychology; Research Personnel; Rest; Role; School-Age Population; Schools; Series; Shapes; Short-Term Memory; Source; Specificity; Staging; Stimulus; Syndrome; System; Testing; Time; Turner' s Syndrome; Ursidae Family; Weight; Writing; base; behavior measurement; density; design; developmental disease; early childhood; insight; mathematical ability; neural patterning; neuroimaging; novel; operation; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; response; tool

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Extraordinarily little is known about the organization of quantitative concepts in the young child's brain. In just six years' time (between the ages of 2 and 8 years), children traverse a complex series of learning "stages" to acquire the meanings of verbal counting words, Arabic numerals, written number words, and the procedures of basic arithmetic operations such as addition and subtraction. Researchers in the fields of psychology and education have determined that these early mathematical milestones influence children's abilities to learn mathematics for the remainder of their formal education. However, there is considerable debate over which aspects of early numerical and mathematical learning influence children's subsequent understanding of mathematics. Some researchers hypothesize that domain-general aspects of cognition provide the critical link between early and late mathematics learning whereas other researchers argue that early-developing domain-specific properties of numerical understanding such as number encoding and comparison permanently impact mathematical understanding throughout development. Neuroimaging methods offer a means for bringing new data to bear on this debate, by providing a tool with which to examine associations and dissociations among the underlying processes of numerical cognition. Such data will offer a window into the organization of mathematical information in the young child's brain and will provide novel insights into the sources, functions, and specificity of mathematical processes in the developing brain. The current proposal aims to test children (4- to 8-year-olds) and adults in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral studies that examine the mechanisms of symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical representation and comparison, as well as the relationship between those mechanisms and performance on standardized tests. The study paradigms are designed to examine associations and dissociations among 1) symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical representation, 2) numerical encoding, comparison, and response selection, and 3) numerical quantities and non-numerical quantities such as size and space. Moreover, the proposed studies aim to test the relationships between number-specific brain responses versus domain-general brain responses and children's performance on standardized mathematics, IQ, and working memory tests. The results of these studies will reveal which number-related abilities are bound over development, how those abilities are organized in the brain during early childhood, and how number- related and domain-general brain responses are related to children's performance on different types of standardized tests. More broadly, these studies will build on the vast amount of behavioral data from children's early mathematical performance by providing new (biological) insights into the early markers of numerical and mathematical learning and will illuminate the potential bases of disorders in mathematical performance. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The mathematics abilities that children possess at a young age (even in preschool) affect their ability to learn math for the rest of their life. Brain imaging studies of math in young children are important for understanding what causes math abilities to develop normally and what causes them to be impaired. The results of these studies will be important for understanding poor math performance in school as well as developmental disorders that cause severe mathematical impairments.

描述（由申请人提供）：关于幼儿大脑中定量概念的组织，鲜为人知。在短短六年的时间（在2至8岁之间），儿童穿越一系列复杂的学习“阶段”，以获取口头计数单词，阿拉伯数字，书面数字单词以及基本算术操作（例如加法和减法）的过程。心理学和教育领域的研究人员确定，这些早期数学里程碑会影响儿童在其余的正规教育中学习数学的能力。但是，关于早期数值和数学学习的哪些方面影响了儿童随后对数学的理解。一些研究人员假设认知的领域总方面提供了早期和晚期学习之间的关键联系，而其他研究人员则认为，在整个发展过程中，数值编码和比较的数值理解和比较会永久影响数学理解等数值理解的特定于数值理解的特性。神经影像学方法通过提供一种工具来检查基本认知过程中的关联和分离，提供了一种在这场辩论中带来新数据的方法。这样的数据将为幼儿大脑中的数学信息组织提供一个窗口，并将为发育中的大脑中数学过程的来源，功能和特异性提供新的见解。 当前的提案旨在测试儿童（4至8岁）和功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）和行为研究的儿童（4至8岁），并研究了符号和非甲状化数值表示和比较的机制，以及在标准化测试中的机制与性能之间的关系。该研究范例旨在检查1）符号和非符号数值表示之间的关联和解离，2）数值编码，比较和响应选择，以及3）数值数量和非数量量，例如大小和空间。此外，拟议的研究旨在测试数量特定的大脑反应与领域大脑的反应与儿童在标准化数学，智商和工作记忆测试上的表现之间的关系。这些研究的结果将揭示哪些与数字相关的能力在发育中构成了束缚，这些能力在幼儿期间如何在大脑中组织，以及与儿童在不同类型的标准化测试中的表现有关。从更广泛的角度来看，这些研究将基于儿童早期数学表现的大量行为数据，通过为数值和数学学习的早期标记提供新的（生物）洞察力，并阐明数学表现中疾病的潜在基础。 公共卫生相关性：儿童年轻时（甚至在学前班）拥有的数学能力会影响他们在余生中学习数学的能力。幼儿数学的大脑成像研究对于理解导致数学正常发展的是什么以及导致它们受损的是什么。这些研究的结果对于了解学校的数学表现不佳以及导致严重数学障碍的发育障碍将很重要。