Neural representations of numbers in young elementary school children

The first few years of formal schooling challenge children to learn foundational numeracy skills in classrooms full of distractions. How do children ignore these distractions and come to represent Arabic numerals (symbolic) and their associated quantities (non-symbolic)? Prominent models of numerical cognition development propose that symbolic and non-symbolic representations are either “mapped” onto one another or become “estranged” over time, resulting in format-specific representations. First, leveraging longitudinal neuroimaging data from children aged 5–8, I show distinct neural activation for symbolic and non-symbolic numbers. However, the relationship between formats does not change with age during early elementary school, suggesting that neither representational mapping nor estrangement occurs during this developmental period. Next, using representational similarity analysis in a subset of these children during their kindergarten year, I will provide evidence that kindergarteners utilize multifaceted representations of symbolic and non-symbolic numbers that are distributed across frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital brain regions. I will conclude by proposing a potential unifying framework to link the neuroscientific study of attention with numerical cognition development.

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