Number sense across the lifespan as revealed by a massive Internet-based sample
Number sense across the lifespan as revealed by a massive Internet-based sample
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1200196109
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发表时间：
2012-07-10
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Germine, Laura
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Halberda, Justin;Ly, Ryan;Germine, Laura
很难确定认知系统在整个生命的大时间尺度上如何变化，因为很少有认知系统被足够好地理解;在婴儿，青少年和成年人中可观察到;并且足够简单，可以在不同年龄之间进行比较。在这里，我们用来自11至85岁的10，000多名参与者的数据来解决这一挑战，并调查基本数字直觉的精度及其与学生一生中在学校数学中的表现的关系。我们都有一种基本的数感，在成人、婴儿和非人类动物身上都观察到了这种感觉，而在人类身上，这种感觉是由顶内沟的神经元产生的。这种进化上古老的数感的精确性的个体差异可能会影响儿童在学校的数学表现;然而，我们对童年之后的作用知之甚少。在这里，我们发现，人口趋势表明，一个人的数字感的精确度在整个学龄期间都有所提高，在30岁左右达到顶峰。尽管这种逐渐发展的改善，我们发现非常大的个体差异，在数感精度在同一年龄的人，这些差异涉及到学校的数学表现在整个青春期和成人年。数字感的巨大个体差异和长期发展，再加上其与整个年龄段的数学能力的一致和具体联系，为针对数字感的教育干预措施的影响带来了希望。
It has been difficult to determine how cognitive systems change over the grand time scale of an entire life, as few cognitive systems are well enough understood; observable in infants, adolescents, and adults; and simple enough to measure to empower comparisons across vastly different ages. Here we address this challenge with data from more than 10,000 participants ranging from 11 to 85 years of age and investigate the precision of basic numerical intuitions and their relation to students' performance in school mathematics across the lifespan. We all share a foundational number sense that has been observed in adults, infants, and nonhuman animals, and that, in humans, is generated by neurons in the intraparietal sulcus. Individual differences in the precision of this evolutionarily ancient number sense may impact school mathematics performance in children; however, we know little of its role beyond childhood. Here we find that population trends suggest that the precision of one's number sense improves throughout the school-age years, peaking quite late at similar to 30 y. Despite this gradual developmental improvement, we find very large individual differences in number sense precision among people of the same age, and these differences relate to school mathematical performance throughout adolescence and the adult years. The large individual differences and prolonged development of number sense, paired with its consistent and specific link to mathematics ability across the age span, hold promise for the impact of educational interventions that target the number sense.