Development of bilateral parietal activation for complex visual‐spatial function: Evidence from a visual‐spatial construction task

Ferrara, Katrina; Seydell‐Greenwald, Anna; Chambers, Catherine E.; Newport, Elissa L.; Landau, Barbara

doi:10.1111/desc.13067

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…More importantly, we chose adult participants based on the fact that the neural activation evoked by the cognitive processes proposed underlying CT, such as reasoning, spatial cognition, and language, resides in similar cortical regions in adults and the participants in the middle childhood and adolescence (e.g. Crone, et al, 2009;Feng, et al, 2020;Ferrara, et al, 2021). Future studies are needed to explore developmental changes of neural correlates underlying CT to illustrate how education on CT shapes the brain.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Adults were recruited because of participant's availability. This choice was made on the basis that the neural activation evoked by the cognitive processes underlying CT, such as reasoning, spatial cognition, and language, resides in similar cortical regions in adults and children (Feng, Altarelli, Monzalvo, Ding, Ramus, Shu, et al, 2020;Ferrara, Seydell-Greenwald, Chambers, Newport, & Landau., 2021). Scanning was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Beijing Normal University.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development and Validation of Computational Thinking Assessment of Chinese Elementary School Students

Yan

Liu

2021

Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology

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Recent advances in artificial intelligence have brought attention to computational thinking (CT) in school education worldwide. However, little is known about the development of the literacy of CT in children, mainly because of the lack of proper psychometric assessments. We developed the first psychometrically validated assessment on the literacy of CT of children in Chinese elementary schools, coined as the Computational Thinking Assessment for Chinese Elementary Students (CTA-CES). Items were constructed to reflect key aspects of CT such as abstraction, algorithm thinking, decomposition, evaluation, and pattern recognition. To examine the test reliability and validity, we recruited two samples of 280 third- to sixth-grade students in total. Cronbach’s alpha provided evidence for the reliability of the test scores, item response theory analyses demonstrated psychometric appropriateness, whereas construct validity was verified by convergent validity, and criterion-related validity was confirmed by correlations between the CTA-CES and measures related to CT, namely reasoning, spatial ability, and verbal ability. In addition, an fMRI study further demonstrated similar neural activation patterns when students conducted the CTA-CES and programming tasks. Taken together, the CTA-CES is the first reliable and valid instrument for measuring the literacy of CT for Chinese children, and may be applicable to children worldwide.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Validation of Computational Thinking Assessment of Chinese Elementary School Students

Yan

Liu

2021

Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology

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“…Activation in right and left superior parietal areas were reported in participants between 7 and 17 years of age (no age effects were evaluated). Lastly, Ferrara et al (2020) tested children between the ages of 5 and 11 and found consistent and robust bilateral parietal activation associated with a visual-spatial construction task.…”

Section: Research Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…For example, visual-spatial construction, as tested by a puzzle task inspired by the well-known WASI-II Block Design sub-test (Wechsler, 2011), shows consistent activation of bilateral inferior and superior parietal regions in healthy adults (Seydell-Greenwald et al, 2017) and children (Ferrara et al, 2020;see Ebner et al, 2011, for similar results).…”

Section: Research Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…This was done to avoid the potential influence that task difficulty can have on lateralization of neural activation (Just et al., 1996; Murphy & Garavan, 2004; Yeatman et al., 2010). By choosing stimuli for which judgments would be relatively easy, we achieved high and similar levels of accuracy for the two conditions while keeping our participants actively engaged across a wide age range (see Ferrara et al., 2020 for a similar method).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developmental changes in neural lateralization for visual‐spatial function: Evidence from a line‐bisection task

Ferrara

Seydell‐Greenwald

Chambers

et al. 2021

Developmental Science

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Studies of hemispheric specialization have traditionally cast the left hemisphere as specialized for language and the right hemisphere for spatial function. Much of the supporting evidence for this separation of function comes from studies of healthy adults and those who have sustained lesions to the right or left hemisphere. However, we know little about the developmental origins of lateralization. Recent evidence suggests that the young brain represents language bilaterally, with 4-6-year-olds activating the left-hemisphere regions known to support language in adults as well as homotopic regions in the right hemisphere. This bilateral pattern changes over development, converging on left-hemispheric activation in late childhood. In the present study, we ask whether this same developmental trajectory is observed in a spatial task that is strongly right-lateralized in adults-the line bisection (or "Landmark") task. We examined fMRI activation among children ages 5-11 years as they were asked to judge which end of a bisected vertical line was longer. We found that young children showed bilateral activation, with activation in the same areas of the right hemisphere as has been shown among adults, as well as in the left hemisphere homotopic regions. By age 10, activation was right-lateralized. This strongly resembles the developmental trajectory for language, moving from bilateral to lateralized activation. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and suggest that understanding the development of lateralization for a range of cognitive functions can play a crucial role in understanding general principles of how and why the brain comes to lateralize certain functions.

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Supporting mathematics learning: a review of spatial abilities from research to practice

Cui

Guo

2022

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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Development of bilateral parietal activation for complex visual‐spatial function: Evidence from a visual‐spatial construction task

Cited by 10 publications

References 91 publications

Development and Validation of Computational Thinking Assessment of Chinese Elementary School Students

Development and Validation of Computational Thinking Assessment of Chinese Elementary School Students

Developmental changes in neural lateralization for visual‐spatial function: Evidence from a line‐bisection task

Supporting mathematics learning: a review of spatial abilities from research to practice

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