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The neural basis of metacognitive monitoring during arithmetic in the developing brain.

ABSTRACT: In contrast to a substantial body of research on the neural basis of cognitive performance in several academic domains, less is known about how the brain generates metacognitive (MC) awareness of such performance. The existing work on the neurobiological underpinnings of metacognition has almost exclusively been done in adults and has largely focused on lower level cognitive processing domains, such as perceptual decision-making. Extending this body of evidence, we investigated MC monitoring by asking children to solve arithmetic problems, an educationally relevant higher-order process, while providing concurrent MC reports during fMRI acquisition. Results are reported on 50 primary school children aged 9-10 years old. The current study is the first to demonstrate that brain activity during MC monitoring, relative to the control task, increased in the left inferior frontal gyrus in children. This brain activity further correlated with children's arithmetic development over a 3-year time period. These data are in line with the frequently suggested, yet never empirically tested, hypothesis that activity in the prefrontal cortex during arithmetic is related to the higher-order process of MC monitoring.

SUBMITTER: Bellon E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7555088 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The neural basis of metacognitive monitoring during arithmetic in the developing brain.

Bellon Elien E Fias Wim W Ansari Daniel D De Smedt Bert B

Human brain mapping 20200723 16

In contrast to a substantial body of research on the neural basis of cognitive performance in several academic domains, less is known about how the brain generates metacognitive (MC) awareness of such performance. The existing work on the neurobiological underpinnings of metacognition has almost exclusively been done in adults and has largely focused on lower level cognitive processing domains, such as perceptual decision-making. Extending this body of evidence, we investigated MC monitoring by ...[more]

PMID: 32701218

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Project description:Brain disorders are often investigated in isolation, but very different conclusions might be reached when studies directly contrast multiple disorders. Here, we illustrate this in the context of specific learning disorders, such as dyscalculia and dyslexia. While children with dyscalculia show deficits in arithmetic, children with dyslexia present with reading difficulties. Furthermore, the comorbidity between dyslexia and dyscalculia is surprisingly high. Different hypotheses have been proposed on the origin of these disorders (number processing deficits in dyscalculia, phonological deficits in dyslexia) but these have never been directly contrasted in one brain imaging study. Therefore, we compared the brain activity of children with dyslexia, children with dyscalculia, children with comorbid dyslexia/dyscalculia and healthy controls during arithmetic in a design that allowed us to disentangle various processes that might be associated with the specific or common neural origins of these learning disorders. Participants were 62 children aged 9 to 12, 39 of whom had been clinically diagnosed with a specific learning disorder (dyscalculia and/or dyslexia). All children underwent fMRI scanning while performing an arithmetic task in different formats (dot arrays, digits and number words). At the behavioral level, children with dyscalculia showed lower accuracy when subtracting dot arrays, and all children with learning disorders were slower in responding compared to typically developing children (especially in symbolic formats). However, at the neural level, analyses pointed towards substantial neural similarity between children with learning disorders: Control children demonstrated higher activation levels in frontal and parietal areas than the three groups of children with learning disorders, regardless of the disorder. A direct comparison between the groups of children with learning disorders revealed similar levels of neural activation throughout the brain across these groups. Multivariate subject generalization analyses were used to statistically test the degree of similarity, and confirmed that the neural activation patterns of children with dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyslexia/dyscalculia were highly similar in how they deviated from neural activation patterns in control children. Collectively, these results suggest that, despite differences at the behavioral level, the brain activity profiles of children with different learning disorders during arithmetic may be more similar than initially thought.

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Dataset Information

The neural basis of metacognitive monitoring during arithmetic in the developing brain.

Publications

The neural basis of metacognitive monitoring during arithmetic in the developing brain.

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