Inborn Number Sense and Math Skills, Genes for IQ?

12 August 2011: More findings on genes and IQ

...the study -- published online in a recent issue of Developmental Science -- indicates that math ability in preschool children is strongly linked to their inborn and primitive "number sense," called an "Approximate Number System" or ANS. _SD

Johns Hopkins psychologists have found a connection between a child's innate "number sense" and his ability to master math skills. The "number sense" was tested using a computer screen of flashing blue and yellow dots, similar to the image below. Children had to tell the researchers whether there were more blue or yellow dots, for a number of different dot combinations.

Panamath: More Yellow or Blue Dots?

Some comparisons were easy (like comparing five yellow versus 10 blue dots). Others were much harder (like comparing five yellow versus six blue dots). Children were informed of right or wrong answers via a high- or low-pitched beep. (You can take a test similar to the one administered to the children online here: http://www.panamath.org/testyourself.php )


The children also were given a standardized test of early mathematics ability that measures numbering skills (verbally counting items on a page), number-comparison (determining which of two spoken number words is greater or lesser), numeral literacy (reading Arabic numbers), mastery of number facts (such as addition or multiplication), calculation skills (solving written addition and subtraction problems) and number concepts (such as answering how many sets of 10 are in 100.) This standardized test is often given to children between the ages of 3 and 8 years.


...According to the researchers, this means that inborn numerical estimation abilities are linked to achievement (or lack thereof) in school mathematics.


"Previous studies testing older children left open the possibility that differences in instructional experience is what caused the difference in their number sense; in other words, that some children tested in middle or high school looked like they had better number sense simply because they had had better math instruction," Libertus said. "Unlike those studies, this one shows that the link between 'number sense' and math ability is already present before the beginning of formal math instruction."


Still in question, of course, is the root cause of the link between number sense and math ability. _SD

These findings share some similarities with those of a recent U. of Missouri study, highlighted in an earlier Al Fin posting. Innate number sense would represent one of the "confounders" which Al Fin warned the U. Missouri researchers about.

Abstract for Johns Hopkins study discussed above

The controversy over whether human intelligence can be partially inherited, or whether cognitive ability is purely an environmental trait, rages behind the scenes in universities around the world. Academics who have been indoctrinated into pure egalitarian philosophies often balk at the idea that much of human cognitive aptitude is inherited. And yet the evidence continues to accumulate.

Not that it has been easy to find so-called "intelligence genes." Not at all. No one said it would be easy.

Scientists who hunt for "intelligence genes" used to think there were fewer than half a dozen of them.


In recent years, they determined there may be at least 1,000 - each with just a tiny effect on the differences in people's IQ. A study released Tuesday found new evidence that many genes play a role in intelligence, but scientists still couldn't pinpoint the specific genes involved.


...Previous work involving twins and adopted children has found that genes have a significant influence on differences in IQ scores, producing about half the difference between adults in general. The influence of genes on IQ appears to grow from childhood to adulthood.


Scientists have come to realize that, as with height, differences in intelligence come not from a few genes, but rather the overall effect of many genes, each with only tiny influence. That makes them hard to tease out.


The new DNA study, reported online Tuesday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, came to similar conclusions. Many genes work together to shape intelligence much like the different instruments of an orchestra that play in sync. Unless there's a soloist playing, it's often difficult to decipher the contributions of individual instruments.


...Researchers didn't ID any genes affecting IQ. But they estimated that they found a genetic influence that accounts for at least 40 percent to 50 percent of the differences on intelligence test scores in the 3,511 unrelated adults in their study who were tested on knowledge and problem-solving skills.


They focused on more than 500,000 places in the participants' DNA, looking for evidence that IQ-influencing genes lay close to those places. They concluded that the overall effect was coming from many scattered genetic differences, each of only small influence.


The latest work adds to evidence that even the most powerful of these has only weak influence. Deary said that future studies will probably need to involve millions of people to detect the genetic effects.


Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who's looked for intelligence-related genes for 15 years but didn't participate in the new study, isn't surprised by the latest findings.


"We've got a century of twin and adoption studies," such as those comparing twins reared in different families, that support the notion that about half of IQ differences come from DNA, he said.


...Turkheimer, the Virginia psychologist [author of above study], thinks other types of research such as brain scans might have better luck in understanding what intelligence is.


Those methods are better than "pinning your hopes on adding together a bunch" of small effects from individual genes, he said. _Physorg

Turkheimer certainly has a good point, suggesting that brain scans may offer a faster method for objectively measuring intelligence and cognitive aptitude, as compared to genetic studies. But in reality, all approaches must be taken, in order to fill in as many gaps in our knowledge about human intelligence as possible.

Only the most foolhardy and die-hard of HBD deniers can fail to acknowledge the powerful effect which genes play on the variability of human cognitive skills displayed statistically by different human populations. And yet in a modern academic milieu of egalitarian multiculturalist political correctness, there are plenty of die-hard HBD deniers around at all levels of academia and its human and pseudo-intellectual effluence.

When Is a Child's Brain Ready for Maths?

The newest study examined 90 children recruited from a variety of schools. Half had just completed second grade; the other half had just completed third grade. All children had normal intelligence and had math reasoning scores between the 25th and 98th percentile. On average, the third-graders were one year older than the second-graders and had significantly better math-reasoning skills.

...The scientists found that children in third grade showed much more differentiated brain responses between complex and simple problems. They found significant change in the responses of two key regions of the brain to the different types of addition problems.Greater responses to complex addition problems were seen in third-graders’ brains in both the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area responsible for manipulating information in working memory, and in the intraparietal sulcus, a posterior brain region essential for representing numerical quantity. _Vinod Menon et al described in Physorg

MyNextBrain_Taken from Brain Age PDF
It appears that significant changes in brain function occur in children sometime between grades 2 and 3, measured by fMRI. At least some of these changes in brain activity appear to allow more sophisticated maths reasoning in children.

Compared to 2nd graders, 3rd graders showed greater activity in dorsal stream parietal areas right SPL, IPS and angular gyrus (AG) as well as ventral visual stream areas bilateral lingual gyrus (LG), right lateral occipital cortex (LOC) and right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG). Significant differences were also observed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), with 3rd graders showing greater activation in left dorsal lateral PFC (dlPFC) and greater deactivation in the ventral medial PFC (vmPFC). Third graders also showed greater functional connectivity between the left dlPFC and multiple posterior brain areas, with larger differences in dorsal stream parietal areas SPL and AG, compared to ventral stream visual areas LG, LOC and PHG. No such between-grade differences were observed in functional connectivity between the vmPFC and posterior brain regions. These results suggest that even the narrow one-year interval spanning grades 2 and 3 is characterized by significant arithmetic task-related changes in brain response and connectivity, and argue that pooling data across wide age ranges and grades can miss important neurodevelopmental changes. _Abstract Menon et al via ScienceDirect

It is likely that another similar maths-facilitating change occurs during puberty, at least partially triggered by testosterone surge. Understanding these age specific developmental brain changes is critical to the study of group differences and the efficacy of interventions in maths learning.

Abstract from an earlier collaboration between David Geary and Vinod Menon dealing with counting and retrieval strategies in early maths learning.

Modern high tech societies are based upon technologies which require sophisticated maths skills. Various commercial methods from maths learning have been developed in an attempt to assure a plentiful supply of talent for engineering and science training programs of the future. Most of these programs fail to compensate for the huge weaknesses of the government educational system as a whole, which limits their usefulness.

Music learning is another activity which displays a developmental learning window in childhood, at least for highly proficient musical skills and abilities. Not coincidentally, musical skills and math skills overlap significantly. This interesting study looks at brain networks in music, and how they come into play during everyday "segmentation of the neural stream." In other words, good and timely early childhood training in language, maths, music -- and probably many other skills not properly delineated -- can make a crucial difference in the skillful execution of ordinary moment to moment thinking processes.

This page links to a sophisticated analysis (PDF Thesis Download 6MB) of fMRI analysis of mental patterns from a whole-brain spatio-temporal perspective. Only for those most curious.

Modern educators and neuroscientists do not actually understand how children learn, nor do they know the best ways of assisting children in the crucial learning processes. In fact, modern educational practises are so infused with politicised dogma and indoctrination, that a mainstream education is apt to do as much harm as good in the average student.

If you are the parent of a young or adolescent child, DO NOT LEAVE your child's education up to the system. To you, your child is your life. To the system, your child is a statistic, prone to currents of political favouritism and neglect.

Computer Assisted Tutoring Especially Helpful for Maths?

A new Carnegie Mellon University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute study indicates that grammar school students who receive mathematics tutoring assistance from computer programs score higher in year-to-year achievement, than their untutored cohorts.

Year-end test scores of Massachusetts middle school students whose teachers used a Web-based tutoring platform called ASSISTments as a central part of their mathematics instruction were significantly better than those of students whose teachers did not use the platform, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Educational Computing Research. Conducted by Neil T. Heffernan, PhD, of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and Kenneth R. Koedinger, PhD, and Elizabeth A. McLaughlin, both of Carnegie Mellon University, the study examined data collected from 1,240 seventh grade students in four schools in an urban Massachusetts school district.

The study (http://tinyurl.com/34j4ylj) compared students’ seventh-grade year-end test scores to their comparable scores at the end of sixth grade. Students at three schools where ASSISTments was used were shown to significantly outperform their peers at the fourth school, where it was not used. The improvement in test scores was pronounced for all students in the schools where ASSISTments was used... _ScienceBlog

One up and coming online approach to math tutoring for children is "Mathletics."

Mathletics portends of the education system that is to come. Beyond its strong approach to pushing students to love math, it is also digitally equipped in ways that give it a clear edge over previous programs. Students can login anytime 24/7, from any internet-capable computer, and continue their lessons. Not quite as good as having a teacher available at all hours of the day, but still pretty good. The reward system takes a note from many popular video games on the market, allowing students to build virtual avatars they can customize by earning more points. There’s also intelligent response from the system – Mathletics adapts to students during exercises, adjusting difficulty to match progress so far. Students can track their personal progress and, when ready, compete against their peers on a global scale. That gives each mathlete the feeling that they are part of something bigger, a sense of belonging that could transform math from a fun challenge to a purposeful part of their lives. _SingularityInstitute

One of the reasons why web-based programs may be particularly suitable for mathematics tutoring, is the personalised nature of mathematical "understanding." The Eureka! or Aha! moment of comprehending a mathematical concept is less social and more personal. It is nice when such personal moments can be shared, but that is not necessarily how it happnes. Due to the uniqueness of each individual brain -- and the brain's historical experiences -- the moment of cohesive comprehension for one brain is not likely to occur at the same time as for another brain. Mathematics is both more logical and more emotional than many human endeavours. This makes it a more delicate subject to teach.

Personal tutoring almost always involves some level of interpersonal tension or pressure to perform. Sometimes a student says he understands a point, just to keep things moving. When it subsequently becomes clear that the student does not understand, interpersonal tensions can ratchet upwards. With computers, such tension is typically absent.

Most learning software is still abysmally primitive and uninformed -- in terms of how children and adolescents learn. As more people with a deep insight into learning psychology come together to create improved approaches to computer tutoring, better learning should take place in several new areas besides just maths.