Development of brain systems for nonsymbolic numerosity and the relationship to formal math academic achievement.

ABSTRACT: A central question in cognitive and educational neuroscience is whether brain operations supporting nonlinguistic intuitive number sense (numerosity) predict individual acquisition and academic achievement for symbolic or "formal" math knowledge. Here, we conducted a developmental functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of nonsymbolic numerosity task performance in 44 participants including 14 school age children (6-12 years old), 14 adolescents (13-17 years old), and 16 adults and compared a brain activity measure of numerosity precision to scores from the Woodcock-Johnson III Broad Math index of math academic achievement. Accuracy and reaction time from the numerosity task did not reliably predict formal math achievement. We found a significant positive developmental trend for

SUBMITTER: Haist F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4477628 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature