Special Issue: Space, Time and Number Origins of spatial, temporal and numerical cognition: Insights from comparative psychology

Contemporary comparative cognition has a large repertoire of animal models and methods, with concurrent theoretical advances that are providing initial answers to crucial questions about human cognition. What cognitive traits are uniquely human? What are the speciestypical inherited predispositions of the human mind? What is the human mind capable of without certain types of specific experiences with the surrounding environment? Here, we review recent findings from the domains of space, time and number cognition. These findings are produced using different comparative methodologies relying on different animal species, namely birds and non-human great apes. The study of these species not only reveals the range of cognitive abilities across vertebrates, but also increases our understanding of human cognition in crucial ways. Researching human cognition through the study of other species 'He who understands baboon would do more towards Metaphysics than Locke' (Charles Darwin, 1838, Notebook M84e) In this short note, 21 years before publication of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin recognised the value of studying animal cognition for human psychology. Implicit here is the idea that cognitive processes are biological adaptations with evolutionary histories and, therefore, cognition is tractable to between-species mapping of similarities and differences in cognitive abilities. The past two decades have seen an increase in the number of species studied and the types of methodological approaches used in the growing field of comparative cognition Are some cognitive capacities in place at birth? Rigorous controlled-rearing experiments with non-human animals enabled scientists to establish what mechanisms are present at birth and the impact of specific experiences on shaping basic perceptual-motor capacities 552 1364-6613/$ -see front matter

Transfer of automatic skills: the role of automaticity in skill acquisition and transfer

Skill acquisition theories suggest that automaticity of lower-level processes is required before the acquisition of higher-level skills can be attempted. However, there is a disparity between the theoretical expectations of skill acquisition and the empirical findings in the transfer of training research. Research has found that when a change is made to the contextual conditions in which a skill is acquired, the learned response becomes less skilled. When skill transfer occurs performance is disrupted so that reaction times are slower than observed prior to the context change. This observation has been made with several different tasks, however no research has established whether a transfer disruption is observed with automatic skills. The discrepancy between the theoretical assumptions and empirical findings suggests that aiming for automaticity in education may not be best practice. The experiments in the current thesis were designed to examine whether automaticity disrupts or enhances transfer performance. The studies were based on Lassaline and Logan’s (1993) visual numerosity task and Speelman and Parkinson’s (2012) two-step task design. The study has a particular emphasis on individual differences, and thus individual participant data are explored to determine the pervasiveness of trends observed in the group data. In experiment one it was found that experimental design might play a role in the acquisition and probability of transfer, with the experimental conditions revealing differences in disruption and acquisition of automaticity. Group results in experiment two suggest that automaticity is unaffected by context changes, however individual results revealed that some participants failed to approach automatic performance. In experiment three participants were approaching automaticity, however a large percentage of participants did not demonstrate a shift from controlled to automatic processing. Furthermore, group results suggest that performance is unaffected by context changes in transfer, yet, this observation was not reliably presented amongst individuals with many individuals demonstrating transferable skills while not attaining automaticity. Overall, the results appear to be congruent with Lassaline and Logan’s (1993) findings. According to the group data, automaticity appears to facilitate transfer, and performance continues in accordance with the power law of learning; automaticity was transferred despite novel context changes. However, individual data indicates that not all participants are behaving this way. The current results question whether automaticity should be the desired outcome in education settings as many people failed to achieve automaticity. Further research is required at an individual level that includes factors such as working memory ability and task approach to determine why some participants deviate way from group data trends, and why they may be affected differently by context changes

A multimodal approach to the study of healthy and pathoogical aging

Il presente lavoro si è concentrato sui meccanismi neurofisiologici e comportamentali legati all'invecchiamento sano e patologico. Il primo studio ha esplorato le dinamiche comportamentali ed elettrofisiologiche (N2pc e CDA) del processamento di oggetti multipli in pazienti con decadimento cognitivo lieve ed in pazienti con malattia di Alzheimer (AD), al fine di identificare marcatori neurofisiologici per distinguere l’invecchiamento normale da quello patologico. I dati suggeriscono che la CDA può essere un marcatore neurale utile sia per distinguere tra invecchiamento sano e patologico che per caratterizzare le diverse fasi lungo il continuum della malattia di Alzheimer, diventando un biomarcatore per la diagnosi precoce di AD. Il secondo studio ha valutato la possibilità di applicare un protocollo di neuroriabilitazione non invasiva, mediante stimolazione elettrica transcranica (tES), per migliorare le prestazioni cognitive aumentando il livello di eccitazione. Sia le prestazioni comportamentali ad un compito di memoria a breve termine che gli indici di attivazione fisiologica autonomica (dilatazione pupillare e conduttanza cutanea) sono stati studiati in un gruppo di soggetti giovani sani e in un gruppo di soggetti anziani sani. Nei giovani, entrambe le risposte comportamentali e fisiologiche non sono state modulate dall’applicazione della tES. Negli anziani, invece, la stimolazione reale ha indotto la rievocazione di una proporzione significativamente più bassa di stimoli ad alta salienza, rispetto alla condizione sham, suggerendo una riduzione della capacità di memoria. Gli indici fisiologici risultano inaffidabile nei partecipanti anziani e non possono essere utilizzati per trarre conclusioni definitive sulle modulazioni indotte dalla tES sul livello di eccitazione. Questi risultati hanno mostrato che l’applicazione della tES, durante un compito di memoria a breve termine, modulano diversamente le prestazioni comportamentali nei partecipanti giovani ed in quelli anziani.The present work focused on neurophysiological and behavioral mechanisms related to healthy and pathological aging. The first study explored the behavioral and electrophysiological dynamics (N2pc and CDA) of multiple object processing in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients to identify neurophysiological markers able to differentiate normal from pathological aging. Data suggested that CDA may be a useful neural signature to both distinguish between healthy and pathological aging and characterize the different stages along the AD continuum, possibly becoming a reliable candidate for an early diagnostic biomarker of AD pathology. The second study evaluated the possibility to apply a non-invasive neurorehabilitation protocol, by means of transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), to improve cognitive performance by increasing the level of arousal. Both the behavioral performance to a short term memory task and indexes of autonomic physiological activation (pupillary dilatation and skin conductance) were investigated in a group of healthy young subjects and in a group of healthy elderly subjects. In young, both behavioural and physiological responses were not modulated by tES application. In elderly, instead, real tES induced the report of a significant lower proportion of high salient stimuli, compared to the sham condition, suggesting a reduction of the memory span. The physiological indexes resulted unreliable in elderly participants and they could not be used to draw firm conclusions on the tES modulations of the level of arousal. These results showed that bursts of tES, applied during a short term memory task, differently modulated behavioural performance in young and elderly participants

The Neuroscience of Mathematical Cognition and Learning

The synergistic potential of cognitive neuroscience and education for efficient learning has attracted considerable interest from the general public, teachers, parents, academics and policymakers alike. This review is aimed at providing 1) an accessible and general overview of the research progress made in cognitive neuroscience research in understanding mathematical learning and cognition, and 2) understanding whether there is sufficient evidence to suggest that neuroscience can inform mathematics education at this point. We also highlight outstanding questions with implications for education that remain to be explored in cognitive neuroscience. The field of cognitive neuroscience is growing rapidly. The findings that we are describing in this review should be evaluated critically to guide research communities, governments and funding bodies to optimise resources and address questions that will provide practical directions for short- and long-term impact on the education of future generations

The effects of musical engagement on numerical cognition in early childhood.

Music and mathematics have been associated since Pythagoras, but there is limited evidence on whether musical engagement promotes the acquisition of cognitive skills in young children that support later learning of mathematics. The goal of the present study was to test if numerical cognition and working memory was enhanced in pre-schoolers who were actively engaged in music. The performance of two groups of children (aged 3 to 5) in numeracy, numerosity, subitizing, and memory tasks were compared. The children in the music group (n = 28) had participated in weekly 30-minute music classes for at least 6 months prior to the study. The control group (n = 28) were children attending regular preschools without any additional music classes. Older children (>= 4 years) performed significantly better than younger children (< 4 years) on most measures. A series of ANCOVAs with music group and age as factors and socioeconomic deprivation (NZDep) as a continuous covariate showed that the music group performed significantly better on several measures related to numerical cognition, including numerosity discrimination and subitizing with canonical (symmetrical) displays. Overall, these results provide evidence that musical engagement helps preschool children develop numerical cognition skills

Mathematics Disability vs. Learning Disability: A 360 Degree Analysis

A fundamental issue for research in mathematics disability (MD) and reading disability (RD) is: If these disabilities are clearly distinct, why is there so high a level of comorbidity, together with the converse; if these disabilities are so similar, why are there clear differences in underlying causes and aetiology? In order to address this puzzle, we introduce the “360 degree analysis” (360DA) framework and apply it to the overlap between RD and MD. The 360DA process starts by analyzing the issue from four perspectives: theoretical, developmental, affective, and pedagogical. Under 360DA, these analyses are then integrated to provide insights for theory, and for individual assessment and support, together with directions for future progress. The analyses confirm extensive similarities between arithmetic and reading development in terms of rote learning, executive function (EF), and affective trauma, but also major differences in terms of the conceptual needs, the motor coordination needs, and the methods of scaffolding. In terms of theory, commonalities are interpreted naturally in terms of initial general developmental delay followed by domain-independent affective trauma following school failure. Dissociations are interpreted in terms of cerebellar vs. hippocampal learning networks, sequential vs. spatial processing, and language vs. spatial scaffolding, with a further dimension of the need for accurate fixation for reading. The framework has significant theoretical and applied implications

Conceptual Short Term Memory in Perception and Thought

Conceptual short term memory (CSTM) is a theoretical construct that provides one answer to the question of how perceptual and conceptual processes are related. CSTM is a mental buffer and processor in which current perceptual stimuli and their associated concepts from long term memory (LTM) are represented briefly, allowing meaningful patterns or structures to be identified (Potter, 1993, 1999, 2009). CSTM is different from and complementary to other proposed forms of working memory: it is engaged extremely rapidly, has a large but ill-defined capacity, is largely unconscious, and is the basis for the unreflective understanding that is characteristic of everyday experience. The key idea behind CSTM is that most cognitive processing occurs without review or rehearsal of material in standard working memory and with little or no conscious reasoning. When one perceives a meaningful stimulus such as a word, picture, or object, it is rapidly identified at a conceptual level and in turn activates associated information from LTM. New links among concurrently active concepts are formed in CSTM, shaped by parsing mechanisms of language or grouping principles in scene perception and by higher-level knowledge and current goals. The resulting structure represents the gist of a picture or the meaning of a sentence, and it is this structure that we are conscious of and that can be maintained in standard working memory and consolidated into LTM. Momentarily activated information that is not incorporated into such structures either never becomes conscious or is rapidly forgotten. This whole cycle – identification of perceptual stimuli, memory recruitment, structuring, consolidation in LTM, and forgetting of non-structured material – may occur in less than 1 s when viewing a pictured scene or reading a sentence. The evidence for such a process is reviewed and its implications for the relation of perception and cognition are discussed

Modelling the Developing Mind: From Structure to Change

This paper presents a theory of cognitive change. The theory assumes that the fundamental causes of cognitive change reside in the architecture of mind. Thus, the architecture of mind as specified by the theory is described first. It is assumed that the mind is a three-level universe involving (1) a processing system that constrains processing potentials, (2) a set of specialized capacity systems that guide understanding of different reality and knowledge domains, and (3) a hypecognitive system that monitors and controls the functioning of all other systems. The paper then specifies the types of change that may occur in cognitive development (changes within the levels of mind, changes in the relations between structures across levels, changes in the efficiency of a structure) and a series of general (e.g., metarepresentation) and more specific mechanisms (e.g., bridging, interweaving, and fusion) that bring the changes about. It is argued that different types of change require different mechanisms. Finally, a general model of the nature of cognitive development is offered. The relations between the theory proposed in the paper and other theories and research in cognitive development and cognitive neuroscience is discussed throughout the paper

Executive functions in birds

Executive functions comprise of top-down cognitive processes that exert control over information processing, from acquiring information to issuing a behavioral response. These cogni- tive processes of inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility underpin complex cognitive skills, such as episodic memory and planning, which have been repeatedly investigated in several bird species in recent decades. Until recently, avian executive functions were studied in relatively few bird species but have gained traction in comparative cognitive research following MacLean and colleagues’ large-scale study from 2014. Therefore, in this review paper, the relevant previous findings are collected and organized to facilitate further investigations of these core cognitive processes in birds. This review can assist in integrating findings from avian and mammalian cognitive research and further the current understanding of executive functions’ significance and evolution