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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Unlabelled: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.