Libertus Melissa E, Forsman Lea, Adén Ulrika, Hellgren Kerstin
Department of Psychology, Learning Research and Development Center, University of PittsburghPittsburgh, PA, United States.
Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska InstitutetStockholm, Sweden.
Front Psychol. 2017 Jul 11;8:1175. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01175. eCollection 2017.
Preterm children are at increased risk for poor academic achievement, especially in math. In the present study, we examined whether preterm children differ from term-born children in their intuitive sense of number that relies on an unlearned, approximate number system (ANS) and whether there is a link between preterm children's ANS acuity and their math abilities. To this end, 6.5-year-old extremely preterm (i.e., <27 weeks gestation, = 82) and term-born children ( = 89) completed a non-symbolic number comparison (ANS acuity) task and a standardized math test. We found that extremely preterm children had significantly lower ANS acuity than term-born children and that these differences could not be fully explained by differences in verbal IQ, perceptual reasoning skills, working memory, or attention. Differences in ANS acuity persisted even when demands on visuo-spatial skills and attention were reduced in the ANS task. Finally, we found that ANS acuity and math ability are linked in extremely preterm children, similar to previous results from term-born children. These results suggest that deficits in the ANS may be at least partly responsible for the deficits in math abilities often observed in extremely preterm children.
早产儿童学业成绩不佳的风险增加，尤其是在数学方面。在本研究中，我们考察了早产儿童与足月儿在依赖先天的近似数字系统（ANS）的数字直觉方面是否存在差异，以及早产儿童的ANS敏锐度与他们的数学能力之间是否存在联系。为此，6.5岁的极早产儿（即孕周<27周，n = 82）和足月儿（n = 89）完成了一项非符号数字比较（ANS敏锐度）任务和一项标准化数学测试。我们发现，极早产儿的ANS敏锐度显著低于足月儿，而且这些差异不能完全由言语智商、感知推理能力、工作记忆或注意力的差异来解释。即使在ANS任务中对视觉空间技能和注意力的要求降低时，ANS敏锐度的差异仍然存在。最后，我们发现，极早产儿的ANS敏锐度与数学能力之间存在联系，这与之前足月儿的研究结果相似。这些结果表明，ANS缺陷可能至少部分导致了极早产儿中经常观察到的数学能力缺陷。
