Pickavance John P, Giles Oscar T, Morehead J Ryan, Mushtaq Faisal, Wilkie Richard M, Mon-Williams Mark
School of Psychology, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom.
Centre for Applied Education Research, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Bradford, United Kingdom.
J Neurophysiol. 2022 Apr 1;127(4):1026-1039. doi: 10.1152/jn.00365.2021. Epub 2022 Feb 23.
We previously linked interceptive timing performance to mathematics attainment in 5- to 11-yr-old children, which we attributed to the neural overlap between spatiotemporal and numerical operations. This explanation implies that the relationship should persist through the teenage years. Here, we replicated this finding in adolescents ( = 200, 11-15 yr). However, an alternative explanation is that sensorimotor proficiency and academic attainment are both consequences of executive function. To assess this competing hypothesis, we developed a measure of a core executive function, inhibitory control, from the kinematic data. We combined our new adolescent data with the original children's data (total = 568), performing a novel analysis controlling for our marker of executive function. We found that the relationship between mathematics and interceptive timing persisted at all ages. These results suggest a distinct functional link between interceptive timing and mathematics that operates independently of our measure of executive function. Previous research downplays the role of sensorimotor skills in the development of higher-order cognitive domains such as mathematics: using inadequate sensorimotor measures, differences in "executive function" account for any shared variance. Utilizing a high-resolution, kinematic measure of a sensorimotor skill previously linked to mathematics attainment, we show that inhibitory control alone cannot account for this relationship. The practical implication is that the development of children's sensorimotor skills must be considered in their intellectual development.
我们之前将5至11岁儿童的拦截计时表现与数学成绩联系起来，我们将此归因于时空运算和数字运算之间的神经重叠。这种解释意味着这种关系在青少年时期应该会持续存在。在此，我们在青少年（N = 200，11至15岁）中重复了这一发现。然而，另一种解释是，感觉运动能力和学业成绩都是执行功能的结果。为了评估这一相互竞争的假设，我们从运动学数据中开发了一种核心执行功能——抑制控制的测量方法。我们将新的青少年数据与原始儿童数据相结合（总计N = 568），进行了一项新的分析，对我们的执行功能指标进行了控制。我们发现，数学与拦截计时之间的关系在所有年龄段都持续存在。这些结果表明，拦截计时与数学之间存在一种独特的功能联系，该联系独立于我们的执行功能测量方法而起作用。先前的研究淡化了感觉运动技能在诸如数学等高阶认知领域发展中的作用：由于使用的感觉运动测量方法不充分，“执行功能”的差异解释了任何共同的方差。利用一种先前与数学成绩相关的感觉运动技能的高分辨率运动学测量方法，我们表明仅抑制控制无法解释这种关系。实际的含义是，在儿童的智力发展中必须考虑其感觉运动技能的发展。
