TY  - JOUR
A1  - Oliveira Ferreira, Fernanda de
A1  - Wood, Guilherme
A1  - Pinheiro-Chagas, Pedro
A1  - Lonnemann, Jan
A1  - Krinzinger, Helga
A1  - Willmes, Klaus
A1  - Haase, Vitor Geraldi
T1  - Explaining school mathematics performance from symbolic and nonsymbolic magnitude processing : similarities and differences between typical and low-achieving children
T2  - Psychology & neuroscience
N2  - Magnitude processing is one of the most central cognitive mechanisms that underlie persistent mathematics difficulties. No consensus has yet been reached about whether these difficulties can be predominantly attributed to deficits in symbolic or nonsymbolic magnitude processing. To investigate this issue, we assessed symbolic and nonsymbolic magnitude representations in children with low or typical achievement in school mathematics. Response latencies and the distance effect were comparable between groups in both symbolic and nonsymbolic tasks. The results indicated that both typical and low achievers were able to access magnitude representation via symbolic and nonsymbolic processing. However, low achievers presented higher error rates than typical achievers, especially in the nonsymbolic task. Furthermore, measures of nonsymbolic magnitude explained individual differences in school mathematics better than measures of symbolic magnitude when considering all of the children together. When examining the groups separately, symbolic magnitude representation explained differences in school mathematics in low achievers but not in typical achievers. These results suggest that symbolic magnitude is more relevant to solving arithmetic problems when mathematics achievement is particularly low. In contrast, individual differences in nonsymbolic processing appear to be related to mathematics achievement in a more general manner.
KW  - symbolic number processing
KW  - nonsymbolic number processing
KW  - cognition
KW  - child development
KW  - dyscalculia
Y1  - 2012
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44735
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-447350
SN  - 1983-3288
SN  - 1984-3054
N1  - All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
VL  - 5
IS  - 1
SP  - 37
EP  - 46
PB  - Departamento de Psicologia
CY  - Rio de Janeiro
ER  -