Abstract
Aging often leads to general cognitive decline in domains such as memory and attention. The effect of aging on numerical cognition, particularly on foundational numerical skills known as the number sense, is not well-known. Early research focused on the effect of aging on arithmetic. Recent studies have begun to investigate the impact of healthy aging on basic numerical skills, but focused on non-symbolic quantity discrimination alone. Moreover, contradictory findings have emerged. The current study aimed to further investigate the impact of aging on basic non-symbolic and symbolic numerical skills. A group of 25 younger (18–25) and 25 older adults (60–77) participated in non-symbolic and symbolic numerical comparison tasks. Mathematical and spelling abilities were also measured. Results showed that aging had no effect on foundational non-symbolic numerical skills, as both groups performed similarly [RTs, accuracy and Weber fractions (w)]. All participants showed decreased non-symbolic acuity (accuracy and w) in trials requiring inhibition. However, aging appears to be associated with a greater decline in discrimination speed in such trials. Furthermore, aging seems to have a positive impact on mathematical ability and basic symbolic numerical processing, as older participants attained significantly higher mathematical achievement scores, and performed significantly better on the symbolic comparison task than younger participants. The findings suggest that aging and its lifetime exposure to numbers may lead to better mathematical achievement and stronger basic symbolic numerical skills. Our results further support the observation that basic non-symbolic numerical skills are resilient to aging, but that aging may exacerbate poorer performance on trials requiring inhibitory processes. These findings lend further support to the notion that preserved basic numerical skills in aging may reflect the preservation of an innate, primitive, and embedded number sense.
Highlights
The current study aims to investigate the effect of healthy aging on basic numerical processes, often referred to as the number sense (Dehaene, 2009), by assessing the foundational non-symbolic and symbolic numerical skills of healthy older adults in comparison to younger adults with the use of classic non-symbolic and symbolic numerical comparison tasks
In the field of numerical cognition, much attention has been paid to the number sense in children, and its link with mathematical achievement (Halberda et al, 2008; De Smedt et al, 2009; Libertus et al, 2012, 2013; Piazza et al, 2013)
Where investigation has turned to aging, studies have mostly focused on higher-level numerical skills (e.g., Duverne and Lemaire, 2004; Lemaire and Arnaud, 2008)
Summary
The current study aims to investigate the effect of healthy aging on basic numerical processes, often referred to as the number sense (Dehaene, 2009), by assessing the foundational non-symbolic and symbolic numerical skills of healthy older adults in comparison to younger adults with the use of classic non-symbolic and symbolic numerical comparison tasks. In order to study whether aging was associated with either refined or deteriorated basic numerical skills, Cappelletti et al (2014) compared older and younger participants’ performance on a non-symbolic quantity discrimination task, similar to Halberda et al (2012) Their results showed a larger mean w for older adults, initially suggesting a decline in ANS acuity with aging. The current study aims to measure the number sense, both non-symbolic (ANS) and symbolic (ENS) basic skills in younger and older adults, whilst controlling for mathematical achievement, general cognitive ability and years of education to establish whether basic numerical skills decline in aging (Duverne and Lemaire, 2004; Gandini et al, 2008; Lemaire and Arnaud, 2008; Li et al, 2010; Halberda et al, 2012), or remain stable (Lemaire and Lecacheur, 2007; Dormal et al, 2012; Lambrechts et al, 2013; Cappelletti et al, 2014). Both tasks will be investigated using defined age groups (older adults aged between 60 and 77, and younger adults between 19 and 25), with the findings adding to emerging research on the effect of aging on numerical cognition, on basic symbolic and non-symbolic skills
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