Numerical Cognition: Age-Related Differences in the Speed of Executing Biologically Primary and Biologically Secondary Processes

Dc, Geary; J, Lin

doi:10.1080/036107398244274

Cited by 54 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Together with recent findings showing that numerosity discrimination is also resilient to age (Cappelletti et al, in press), this suggests that non-symbolic quantity processing is generally preserved in healthy ageing. This finding might appear in contrast to other studies showing that flexibility in arithmetical problem solving tasks (e.g., Geary and Lin, 1998; Duverne and Lemaire, 2005; Lemaire and Arnaud, 2008) and performance in temporal estimation tasks (e.g., Block et al, 1998; Baudouin et al, 2006; Lustig and Meck, 2011) decrease with age. However, past research has pointed out that decline in other cognitive functions and processes such as memory, processing speed, attention or executive functions rather than quantity processing itself might account for reduced performance in some numerical and temporal judgment tasks (Salthouse, 1991; Salthouse and Kersten, 1993; Vanneste and Pouthas, 1999; Perbal et al, 2002; Salthouse et al, 2003; Duverne et al, 2008; Cappelletti et al, in press).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Age does not count: resilience of quantity processing in healthy ageing

et al. 2013

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Quantity skills have been extensively studied in terms of their development and pathological decline. Recently, numerosity discrimination (i.e., how many items are in a set) has been shown to be resilient to healthy ageing despite relying on inhibitory skills, but whether processing continuous quantities such as time and space is equally well-maintained in ageing participants is not known. Life-long exposure to quantity-related problems may progressively refine proficiency in quantity tasks, or alternatively quantity skills may decline with age. In addition, is not known whether the tight relationship between quantity dimensions typically shown in their interactions is preserved in ageing. To address these questions, two experimental paradigms were used in 38 younger and 32 older healthy adults who showed typical age-related decline in attention, executive function and memory tasks. In both groups we first assessed time and space discrimination independently using a two-choice task (i.e., “Which of two horizontal lines is longer in duration or extension?”), and found that time and space processing were equally accurate in younger and older participants. In a second paradigm, we assessed the relation between different quantity dimensions which were presented as a dynamic pattern of dots independently changing in duration, spatial extension and numerosity. Younger and older participants again showed a similar profile of interaction between number, cumulative area and duration, although older adults showed a greater sensitivity to task-irrelevant information than younger adults in the cumulative area task but lower sensitivity in the duration task. Continuous quantity processing seems therefore resilient to ageing similar to numerosity and to other non-quantity skills like vocabulary or implicit memory; however, ageing might differentially affect different quantity dimensions.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Age does not count: resilience of quantity processing in healthy ageing

et al. 2013

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“…On the other hand, the ENS, similarly to other education-related abilities, such as spelling and vocabulary ( Hedden and Gabrieli, 2004 ), benefits from life-long exposure and practice associated with aging. Improved basic symbolic processing and mathematical ability in the older group may possibly reflect a generational, qualitative difference in terms of mathematical education ( Geary and Lin, 1998 ). However, regression analyses suggest that this is unlikely, as increasing age accounted for significantly more variance in symbolic discrimination accuracy than mathematical achievement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and the number sense: preserved basic non-symbolic numerical processing and enhanced basic symbolic processing

et al. 2015

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Aging often leads to general cognitive decline in domains such as memory and attention. The effect of aging on numerical cognition, particularly on foundational numerical skills known as the number sense, is not well-known. Early research focused on the effect of aging on arithmetic. Recent studies have begun to investigate the impact of healthy aging on basic numerical skills, but focused on non-symbolic quantity discrimination alone. Moreover, contradictory findings have emerged. The current study aimed to further investigate the impact of aging on basic non-symbolic and symbolic numerical skills. A group of 25 younger (18–25) and 25 older adults (60–77) participated in non-symbolic and symbolic numerical comparison tasks. Mathematical and spelling abilities were also measured. Results showed that aging had no effect on foundational non-symbolic numerical skills, as both groups performed similarly [RTs, accuracy and Weber fractions (w)]. All participants showed decreased non-symbolic acuity (accuracy and w) in trials requiring inhibition. However, aging appears to be associated with a greater decline in discrimination speed in such trials. Furthermore, aging seems to have a positive impact on mathematical ability and basic symbolic numerical processing, as older participants attained significantly higher mathematical achievement scores, and performed significantly better on the symbolic comparison task than younger participants. The findings suggest that aging and its lifetime exposure to numbers may lead to better mathematical achievement and stronger basic symbolic numerical skills. Our results further support the observation that basic non-symbolic numerical skills are resilient to aging, but that aging may exacerbate poorer performance on trials requiring inhibitory processes. These findings lend further support to the notion that preserved basic numerical skills in aging may reflect the preservation of an innate, primitive, and embedded number sense.

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“…In fact, the presence of age-related impairments in multiple target processing is controversial (see Zanto and Gazzaley, 2014 ). For instance, there is evidence of equivalent performance level in young and old adults for tasks where two inputs are processed simultaneously (e.g., Somberg and Salthouse, 1982 ; Hahn and Kramer, 1995 ), with a decline in performance visible only for larger sets of objects (Geary and Lin, 1998 ; Trick et al, 2005 ).…”

Section: Processing Of Multiple Visual Objects In Old Individuals: Ismentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrophysiological Advances on Multiple Object Processing in Aging

Mazza

Brignani

2016

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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EEG research conducted in the past 5 years on multiple object processing has begun to define how the aging brain tracks the numerosity of the objects presented in the visual field for different goals. We review the recent EEG findings in healthy older individuals (age range: 65–75 years approximately) on perceptual, attentional and memory mechanisms-reflected in the N1, N2pc and contralateral delayed activity (CDA) components of the EEG, respectively-during the execution of a variety of cognitive tasks requiring simultaneous processing of multiple elements. The findings point to multiple loci of neural changes in multi-object analysis, and suggest the involvement of early perceptual mechanisms, attentive individuation and working memory (WM) operations in the neural and cognitive modification due to aging. However, the findings do not simply reflect early impairments with a cascade effect over subsequent stages of stimulus processing, but in fact highlight interesting dissociations between the effects occurring at the various stages of stimulus processing. Finally, the results on older adults indicate the occurrence of neural overactivation in association to good levels of performance in easy perceptual contexts, thus providing some hints on the existence of compensatory phenomena that are associated with the functioning of early perceptual mechanisms.

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Numerical Cognition: Age-Related Differences in the Speed of Executing Biologically Primary and Biologically Secondary Processes

Abstract: Groups of younger and older adults were administered numerical and arithmeti

Cited by 54 publications

References 80 publications

Age does not count: resilience of quantity processing in healthy ageing

Age does not count: resilience of quantity processing in healthy ageing

Aging and the number sense: preserved basic non-symbolic numerical processing and enhanced basic symbolic processing

Electrophysiological Advances on Multiple Object Processing in Aging

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