Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-11-03
Abstract： As high-level cognitive processes, executive functions (EF) refer to a set of top-down neurocognitive processes served for conscious, goal-directed control of thought, action and emotion, which is crucial for children’s academic success and mental and physical health. It includes inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility. Although abundant related theories and studies existed, some limitations still remained. Firstly, EF are measured with a single task in previous studies, which are rarely incapable of decomposing different components of EF. They are lack to systematically investigate the unity and diversity of EF from an integrative view; Then, rare studies use longitudinal design to examine the stability of the unity and diversity of children’s executive functions during middle childhood. The present attempted to address these issues mentioned above.
From the perspective of a unity/diversity framework of EF, combined with latent-variable analysis and network analysis, the present study followed 756 students from grade 3 to 4 (Mage = 9.25 years, 51.85% girls) to systematically and comprehensively explore the unity and diversity of EF during middle childhood. They were recruited to measure six tasks related with three main components of EF.
The results showed that: The structure of children’s EF in middle childhood included inhibitory control and combined factor of working memory and cognitive reflection; These six tasks were organized into one stable components through at least age 10; The unity and diversity of EF met full metric invariance.
These findings highlight the importance of understanding the unity and diversity of EF among middle childhood from a developmental perspective, and provide new sight on the measuring means of EF.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： A large number of studies take an “ability” perspective on children’s early mathematical development. They mainly concentrated on children’s early mathematical knowledge and skills, thereby ignoring other possibly relevant aspects of young children’s early mathematical competence. This study focuses on spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON), which is a tendency of individuals to spontaneously pay attention to numerosity-related information in the environment. SFON is likely to be the basis for most other mathematical focusing tendencies, but its association with spontaneous attention to a number (SAN), spontaneously focusing on arabic number symbols (SFONS), and spontaneous focusing on quantitative relations (SFOR) remains to be clarified. As one of domain-specific predictors of mathematical performance, the development trajectory and mechanism of SFON should be paid in future research. The mechanism of SFON may be explored from mathematical motivation and math anxiety, and the measurement of SFON should be improved and innovated. Meanwhile, the research on educational intervention of SFON also should be promoted.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： An important aspect of human cognition is that performance depends on the strategies that people use in a wide range of cognitive domains. In the field of arithmetic cognition, the performance of strategy utilization is influenced by many factors among which central executive functions (central executive functions, EFs) are involved and play critical roles. In previous studies, researchers tended to focus on the impact of central executive load on the use of arithmetic strategy in children or adults with typically development (TD) of mathematical ability, whereas children with mathematics difficulties (MD) had been out of consideration. Consequently, the present study used the choice/no-choice paradigm to investigate the influence of central executive load on the strategy utilization of children with MD during arithmetic processing. Seventy-four sixth graders consisting of 36 MD and 38 TD were selected in accordance with previous studies strictly. All participants were asked to finish a two-digit addition computational estimation task with rounding-up or rounding-down strategy and a secondary task at the same time. The task consisted of two parts, strategy execution and strategy choice. Meanwhile, we manipulated varying central executive load as a secondary task by requiring participants to memorize five (high central executive load) or three (low central executive load) digits presented randomly in sequence at the beginning of each trial and ranked them with descending order or no digit (no central executive load). Results showed that: (1) In terms of the strategy executive, the accuracy rate of MD was significantly lower than TD under the three central executive load conditions. The reaction time of MD was significantly longer than TD under both “no” and low central executive load conditions but not for high central executive loaded condition. With the increasing of central executive load, the MD had distinct manifestation compared with TD on strategy executive; (2) In the case of strategy selection, the accuracy rate of MD was significantly lower than TD and the reaction time of MD was significantly longer than that of TD under three central executive loaded conditions. Compared with TD, the strategy selection of MD was more heavily influenced by the levels of central executive load. Likewise, the performance of MD was influenced by growing central executive load on strategy selection other than TD; (3) For the adaptivity of strategy choice, the higher of the central executive load level was, the worse the adaptivity of strategy choice of participants became, and the adaptivity of strategy choice of MD was significantly worse than TD under all of three central executive load conditions. These findings have important theoretical and practical significance for the profound understanding of the potential mechanism of MD with worse strategy utilization. In conclusion, the strategy utilization of MD is worse than TD during arithmetic processing. Though strategy utilization of both the MD and TD is getting worse as a function of the levels of central executive load, MD are more heavily influenced by central executive load. The adaptivity of strategy choice of two groups is affected by the strength of central executive load and the adaptivity of strategy choice of MD is always worse than TD. Moreover, the present study contributes to explore how the central executive load influences the process of strategy utilization clearly. Combining with event-related potential (ERP) as well as functional magnetic resonance imaging technology (fMRI), future research should further explore the changes of individuals’ ERP components or brain regions activated under different levels of central executive load.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Mathematics is an essential subject related to many fields such as science, engineering, economics, and medicine, which are of great and increasing importance for the development of modern society. In recent years, many studies using quantitative genetics, which adopted the twin-study design, were conducted to identify the heritability of performance related to mathematical ability and disability. Although the underlying mechanism is poorly understood, the qualitative behavioral genetics study demonstrated that mathematical abilities are moderately heritable. However, extant evidence was mainly obtained from quantitative genetic research, solely reported by a few molecular genetic studies, which specifically investigated mathematical ability or disability. To the best of our knowledge, till date, only a single molecular genetic study has investigated the effect of the gene (G) × environment (E) interactions on mathematical ability in children. The present study was designed to extend the previous research by examining the effect of the interaction between brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene rs6265 polymorphism and parent-involved education (PIE) on the basic mathematical ability in primary school children. Further, we assessed these two competing models, the classic diathesis-stress model vs. the newly developed differential susceptibility model.Primary school (PS) children (n = 602, male = 297, female = 305) from 23 classes ranging from grade-3 to grade-6 were included in the study. Their basic mathematical ability was assessed using the Chinese rating scale of pupil’s mathematical abilities and PIE was examined by employing a behavior questionnaire of pupil’s PIE (version answered by parents). The genomic DNA of PS children was extracted from their saliva samples. Genotyping of these DNA samples to identify rs6265 polymorphism in BDNF was performed using real-time PCR with MassARRAY RT software version 3.0.0.4 and analyzed using MassARRAY typer software version 4.0. A series of linear regression statistical analyses were conducted using statistical package for social sciences software version 19.0. Further, re-parameterized regression models were constructed to examine the effect of the interaction between BDNF rs6265 polymorphism and PIE on basic mathematical ability in PS children using the two potential competing G × E hypotheses.In this study, we obtained three major results, which are as follows: (1) BDNF rs6265 polymorphism was significantly associated with logical thinking (LT) and spatial vision (SV) abilities in PS children. Especially, PS children carrying the AA genotype exhibited a better performance of LT and SV abilities compared to PS children carrying the G allele. (2) The interaction between rs6265 polymorphism and PIE substantially predicted LT and SV abilities in PS children. The PIE behavior positively predicted LT and SV abilities among PS children carrying the G allele but not the AA genotype. (3) The indexes in re-parameterized regression models supported the strong diathesis-stress model.In conclusion, by elaborating the moderating effect of PIE, the present study enriches the literature on the association between BDNF rs6265 polymorphism and basic mathematical ability in PS children. This study expands our knowledge regarding the G × E underpinnings of basic mathematical ability and the novel as well as newly developed methods, which are proving to be highly efficient and legitimate.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Mathematics anxiety is a sense of tense and anxious that an individual feels when solving the problems related to mathematics. This phenomenon has a considerable prevalence among children and youth, even in adults. Currently, most studies regard mathematics anxiety as a single-dimensional structure. However, mathematics anxiety is a multi-dimensional structure. For example, individuals with high mathematics learning anxiety are often associated with low mathematics achievement, while individuals with high mathematics evaluation anxiety do not necessarily lead to low mathematics achievement. And the dynamic developmental bio-psycho-social model holds that the interaction between individual factors and environmental factors makes the development of individuals’ mathematics anxiety heterogeneity. As individual factors and environmental factors are constantly developing and changing, the developmental trajectories of mathematics anxiety are dynamic. However, there were no studies has examined the individual heterogeneity of mathematics anxiety and the development and transitions of it from a longitudinal perspective. Moreover, parental educational involvement as one of important environmental factors might predict the transitions of mathematics anxiety over time. Thus, person-centered approach was used to solve these two problems in this study. In this study, 1720 students of grade three and grade four in county primary schools were selected as participants. Children's Mathematics Anxiety Scale compiled by Chiu and Henry (1990) and revised by Geng and Chen (2005) and Questionnaire on Parental Involvement Behavior of Primary School Students compiled by Wu, Han, Wei, and Luo (2013) were used to measure children's mathematics anxiety and their perceived parental educational involvement separately three times over three years. Latent profile analysis and latent transition analysis were used to explore the possible subtypes of children's mathematics anxiety and the transitions between different subtypes over three waves in this study. Multiple logistic regressions were used to examine the effect of parental educational involvement in the latent transitions of different mathematics anxiety subtypes. All data were analyzed by SPSS 22.0 and Mplus 8.0. Some valuable results were obtained as follows. (1)There were three different subgroups of mathematics anxiety in primary school children, including low mathematics anxiety group, high mathematics evaluation anxiety group and high mathematics acquisition anxiety group; (2)As time went by high mathematics evaluation anxiety group tended to change to low mathematics anxiety group, high mathematics acquisition anxiety group tended to change to high mathematics evaluation anxiety group, and low mathematics anxiety group were relatively stable; (3) Positive father involvement could promote the change of children's mathematics anxiety from high mathematics acquisition anxiety group to low mathematics anxiety group, which was mainly in girls. For girls, mother involvement was able to promote the change of their mathematics anxiety from high mathematics evaluation anxiety group to low mathematics anxiety group; however for boys, mother involvement was able to promote the change of their mathematics anxiety from high mathematics evaluation anxiety group to high mathematics acquisition anxiety group. For the low mathematics anxiety group, the positive effect of parental educational involvement was significant. There was group heterogeneity in mathematics anxiety, and distinct subtypes of individuals may change over time, and parental educational involvement played different roles in different subgroups of children's mathematics anxiety. This study confirmed that the dynamic developmental bio-psycho-social model hypothesized that different individuals were affected by the different interaction of individual factors and environmental factors, and there were heterogeneity and dynamics in the developmental trajectories of individual mathematics anxiety. In view of this, parents or teachers should use different teaching methods for different subtypes of mathematics anxiety in mathematics learning. In addition, future researchers should consider individual heterogeneity of mathematics anxiety.
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