Abstract
Given the well-documented failings in mathematics education in many Western societies, there has been an increased interest in understanding the cognitive underpinnings of mathematical achievement. Recent research has proposed the existence of an Approximate Number System (ANS) which allows individuals to represent and manipulate non-verbal numerical information. Evidence has shown that performance on a measure of the ANS (a dot comparison task) is related to mathematics achievement, which has led researchers to suggest that the ANS plays a critical role in mathematics learning. Here we show that, rather than being driven by the nature of underlying numerical representations, this relationship may in fact be an artefact of the inhibitory control demands of some trials of the dot comparison task. This suggests that recent work basing mathematics assessments and interventions around dot comparison tasks may be inappropriate.
Highlights
We live in an increasingly numerically-oriented society
For incongruent trials correct responses were significantly slower than incorrect responses (incorrect incongruent M = 1140ms; t(79) = 3.35, p = . 001), whereas for congruent trials correct responses were significantly faster than incorrect responses (incorrect congruent M = 1310ms; t(79) = -2.60, p = . 011)
These findings all support the proposal that correctly solving an incongruent trial necessarily requires an additional processing step compared to solving a congruent trial, namely inhibiting a response based on visual characteristics
Summary
We live in an increasingly numerically-oriented society. Every day when we shop, travel or communicate we are required to make decisions based on quantitative information. The Stroop task is commonly-used as a measure of inhibitory control and it is likely that performance on incongruent trials of the dot comparison task will reflect the precision of participants’ numerical representations, and their inhibition skills. It is possible that the relationship between dot comparison tasks and mathematics achievement, rather than resulting from the precision of underlying numerical representations, is instead driven by the inhibitory control demands of some trials of the dot comparison task This hypothesis is yet to be tested. In the first experiment we test the relationship between mathematics achievement and congruent vs. incongruent dot comparison trials in children aged 4-11 years, and in the second experiment we explore the relationship between performance on a dot comparison test, inhibition skill and mathematics achievement in children aged 8-10 years
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