The Relationship Of Approximate Number System, Inhibitory Control And Mathematical Ability In Primary School Students

Humans and animals have a system which approximately represents the number of objects or events in a nonverbal way. It is called the Approximate Number System(ANS).The acuity of ANS is always indexed by Weber fraction and accuracy acquired by the non-symbolic magnitude comparison task. ANS acuity continues to increase with the age increasing and many researchers have proved the significantly positive correlation between acuity of ANS and mathematical ability. But these results often come from preschool children or adults, few studies included primary school students. Recently, some researchers have find that in non-symbolic magnitude comparison task that measures acuity of the approximate number system, irrelevant visual stimulus, such as the area and perimeter of a dot, need to inhibit. Subjects are only conducted to identify the number of points, which is similar to STROOP task. The influence of acuity of the approximate number system to mathematics ability be affected by the inhibitory control. Mathematical ability is essential for primary school children and may effect a person’s future. Therefore, to clarify the relation between these three factors is of great significance to early individual mathematical education and dyscalculia intervention.172 students participated in our study to complete Chinese Students Basic Math Ability Test Scale, Stop-signal task and non-symbolic magnitude comparison task to find out the development of ANS and inhibitory control and the influence on mathematical ability, and whether the inhibitory control is the moderator between mathematical ability and ANS acuity.The results indicated:(1)With the age increasing, the mathematical ability, ANS acuity and the level of Inhibitory control of primary school students continues to increase.(2)In non-symbolic magnitude comparison task, visual information affect the judge of subjects.(3) In non-symbolic magnitude comparison task, the number of dots negatively associated area of trails significantly correlated with Inhibitory control.(4)ANS acuity and Inhibitory control can predict the mathematical ability of primary school students.(5)Inhibitory control is the part moderator between mathematical ability and the Weber fraction of trails between mathematical ability and the Weber fraction calculated by the trails which the number of dots negatively associated with area.