From experience to meaning…

I have to admit I am sharing this study because I think it is fascinating. The study in brief:

• Bilingual adults were scanned with fMRI while computing mental arithmetic problems.
• Arithmetic problem solving induced distinct activation pattern in each of bilingual’s languages.
• Language plays a critical role in arithmetic.

Or even shorter: the mathematical processes in our brain are influenced by the language we use. I’m less convinced compared to the researchers about how important this study is for the daily practice, but as I said: I’m fascinated.

From the press release:

People can intuitively recognise small numbers up to four; however, when calculating they depend on the assistance of language. In this respect, the fascinating research question ensues: how do multilingual people solve arithmetical tasks presented to them in different languages of which they have a very good command? The question will gain in importance in the future, as an increasingly globalised job market and accelerated migration will mean that ever more people seek work and study outside of the linguistic area of their home countries.

This question was investigated by a research team led by Dr Amandine Van Rinsveld and Professor Dr Christine Schiltz from the Cognitive Science and Assessment Institute (COSA) at the University of Luxembourg. For the purpose of the study, the researchers recruited subjects with Luxembourgish as their mother tongue, who successfully completed their schooling in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and continued their academic studies in francophone universities in Belgium. Thus, the study subjects mastered both the German and French languages perfectly. As Luxembourger students, they took maths classes in primary schools in German and then in secondary schools in French.

In two separate test situations, the study participants had to solve very simple and a bit more complex addition tasks, both in German and French. In the tests it became evident that the subjects were able to solve simple addition tasks equally well in both languages. However, for complex addition in French, they required more time than with an identical task in German. Moreover, they made more errors when attempting to solve tasks in French.

During the tests, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure the brain activity of the subjects. This demonstrated that, depending on the language used, different brain regions were activated. With addition tasks in German, a small speech region in the left temporal lobe was activated. When solving complex calculatory tasks in French, additional parts of the subjects’ brains responsible for processing visual information, were involved. However, during the complex calculations in French, the subjects additionally fell back on figurative thinking. The experiments do not provide any evidence that the subjects translated the tasks they were confronted with from French into German, in order to solve the problem. While the test subjects were able to solve German tasks on the basis of the classic, familiar numerical-verbal brain areas, this system proved not to be sufficiently viable in the second language of instruction, in this case French. To solve the arithmetic tasks in French, the test subjects had to systematically fall back on other thought processes, not observed so far in monolingual persons.

The study documents for the first time, with the help of brain activity measurements and imaging techniques, the demonstrable cognitive “extra effort” required for solving arithmetic tasks in the second language of instruction. The research results clearly show that calculatory processes are directly affected by language.

Abstract of the study:

How do bilinguals solve arithmetic problems in each of their languages? We investigated this question by exploring the neural substrates of mental arithmetic in bilinguals. Critically, our population was composed of a homogeneous group of adults who were fluent in both of their instruction languages (i.e., German as first instruction language and French as second instruction language). Twenty bilinguals were scanned with fMRI (3 T) while performing mental arithmetic. Both simple and complex problems were presented to disentangle memory retrieval occuring in very simple problems from arithmetic computation occuring in more complex problems. In simple additions, the left temporal regions were more activated in German than in French, whereas no brain regions showed additional activity in the reverse constrast. Complex additions revealed the reverse pattern, since the activations of regions for French surpassed the same computations in German and the extra regions were located predominantly in occipital regions. Our results thus highlight that highly proficient bilinguals rely on differential activation patterns to solve simple and complex additions in each of their languages, suggesting different solving procedures. The present study confirms the critical role of language in arithmetic problem solving and provides novel insights into how highly proficient bilinguals solve arithmetic problems.

The past week there was some discussion in my own region about the lack of ambition of our students – as described in PISA – while they do perform actually very well in the same international comparison. This study that I found via Paul Kirschner shed some light on another seemingly contradiction. Lee used the following items to measure the Attitude toward School which is actually a bit more about the perception of usefulness of school:

What are the results? In short:

• No direct relationship was found between attitude and achievement.
• It holds for student groups by gender, family SES, and ability levels.
• It was consistent across countries except for Qatar, Iceland, and Australia.
• The finding was well-replicated in the PISA 2003, 2009, and 2012 datasets.

A more elaborated version of the results:

The main findings of this study are as follows.

(a) There is virtually no direct relationship between attitude toward school and reading/mathematics achievement. This apparent lack of relationship was found when attitude toward school was measured by the unidimensional scale (i.e., asking respondents directly about their  school and not about potential factors that may/may not lead to attitude toward school, such as interactions with peers and teachers or learning outcomes).

(b) The lack of substantial relationships holds in general for various student subgroups, including country of residence, OECD membership, gender, family SES, and country modal grades. The finding also holds for the students who are at the ends of the attitude or achievement scores.

(c) Although non-negligible direct relationships between attitude toward school and other predictors in the model (i.e., teacher-student relations, school climate, enjoyment, and self-efficacy) made it possible to observe an indirect effect of attitude on achievement, the strength of this indirect relation was miniscule with almost zero in absolute value of indirect path coefficients.

On the other hand, (d) all the other variables employed in the study (teacher-student relations, school disciplinary climate, enjoyment, and self-efficacy) had direct links to achievement. Among these, the two student-personal variables (enjoyment and self-efficacy) were far stronger predictors of student achievement than attitude toward school or teacher-student relations.

When discussing the ‘boy-problem’ I always have mixed feelings. True, boys have more chance ending up without a degree, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t girls who dropout and that there aren’t boys who do very well in school. This Norwegian study does look at gender differences, but actually states that both boys and girls can benefit from and evidence-based approach for learning how to read.

From the press release:

Many people know that girls, on average, are worse at math than boys. But the gender difference is three times greater when it comes to reading. According to international studies, this is where boys struggle.

Why? And what can be done about it? For starters, children who struggle most with learning to read could be identified earlier than is currently done. And now, researchers are finding new ways to do this.

“Letter-sound knowledge is what best predicts how well students will be able to read later,” says Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Psychology. He has based his research on major empirical studies and theory.

Young children who are good at recognizing their letters and sounds early often become the best readers later on, too.

Differences start at six years old

Sigmundsson and his colleagues are working to develop a method to identify children earlier who may eventually have trouble reading.

Special educator Greta Storm Ofteland developed a letter test that enables early identification of children’s knowledge of letters and their sounds, and thus the children who are likely to struggle with reading.

First graders were tested on four literacy factors when they started school: the number of upper and lowercase letters the children knew and the sounds associated with each of them.

The children’s average age was just over six years old. The study included 485 students, of whom 224 were girls and 261 were boys.

“We found a significant difference between girls and boys in all four variables, in favor of the girls,” said Sigmundsson.

Multifaceted cause

Already by age six, girls are best at recognizing letters and the sounds that correspond to them, and the boys lag behind. The study results are now being published in Frontiers in Psychology.

The explanation for this is probably multifaceted. Heredity is a factor, and most girls are already talking more than most boys from as early as the age of 10 months onward.

Environment also plays a role. Parents tend to talk more with girls from birth. Girls get more practice with letters and sounds than boys do. You don’t learn letters and sounds without being exposed to them. You need to be stimulated and gain this experience.

You may also end up stuck in a downward spiral, at least when it comes to reading. When you first start lagging behind in reading, you become less interested in it as well. Then your reluctance to read increases.

Students are no longer required to read as much at school as they were before. This probably most affects those children who don’t choose to read in their free time and can help explain why gender disparities increase.

High cost of special education

Although girls’ mathematical scores have improved in recent years, gender differences in reading have continued to grow. There is an urgent need to address this problem.

In mathematics, the main reason for the perceived gender difference is that few girls rank among the very best. The big differences are thus at the top of the scale. Many girls are doing reasonably well and relatively few are actually bad at math. However, in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, commonly called PISA, girls are generally worse than boys at math for most countries with the exception of the USA, for reasons that are not known.

The difference with reading is that many boys are struggling, and the big disparities lie at the bottom of the scale. The worst readers are really bad – and this has major consequences.

“Twenty-one per cent of 15-year-old boys in Norway have trouble understanding a text that is given to them, according to the PISA survey from 2015,” says Sigmundsson. These are among the lowest results in the world.

This situation has a cost, first and foremost for the students themselves, but also for society. More than 50,000 primary school students in Norway receive special education. Sixty-eight per cent of them are boys. Special education costs Norwegian society 12,000 FTE employees and several million dollars.

Too little too late

“One major problem is that a lot of the support efforts come too late. If we could catch children earlier who are struggling and give them the right training and follow-up, we might not have to do so much remedial work with them they get older,” says Sigmundsson.

This approach could make school years much easier for a lot of students, and perhaps help prevent some from dropping out. It’s a reality that the students who struggle the most are also at greatest risk of quitting school.

This would reduce the need for as many special educators, and allow them more time for each student who still needs support services.

Finding effective methods for all students

Sigmundsson doesn’t buy the argument that the gender differences in school are primarily due to girls maturing earlier than boys. Although this difference exists, it doesn’t adequately explain the discrepancy.

We now know that children develop skills mainly through experience and stimuli. Other recent research shows that we get good at exactly what we practice. We need to develop nerve connections in the brain through our actions.

Sigmundsson believes it is important to use evidence-based learning methods that are effective for both sexes.

He thinks that all students’ reading skills should be checked when they start primary school. This assessment is easy and only takes a few minutes per child.

“We have to give the boys a boost by finding where each individual student stands. We can do that by emphasizing letters and the sounds that are associated with them. We need to make sure that all children have a good command of letter-sound relationships as early as possible once they start school,” he said.

Make best method mandatory

When children learn to read, it is best to teach them single letters and their sounds first. Don’t go straight to words. This is what the research literature indicates.

This approach is now so widely accepted that the United Kingdom and France are working to make the methodology mandatory.

Norway has not yet followed suit. Teachers in Norwegian schools are free to choose how they want to teach reading – as well as mathematics – to children.

Abstract of the study:

This study explored whether there is a gender difference in letter-sound knowledge when children start at school. 485 children aged 5–6 years completed assessment of letter-sound knowledge, i.e., large letters; sound of large letters; small letters; sound of small letters. The findings indicate a significant difference between girls and boys in all four factors tested in this study in favor of the girls. There are still no clear explanations to the basis of a presumed gender difference in letter-sound knowledge. That the findings have origin in neuro-biological factors cannot be excluded, however, the fact that girls probably have been exposed to more language experience/stimulation compared to boys, lends support to explanations derived from environmental aspects.