The Development Of Context Processing And Its Relationship With Math Abilities In Children At Early School Age

Context processing is the ability to represent and actively maintain context information to prepare the system to respond appropriately to forthcoming events. Context processing is the core of cognitive control. Context processing has two components, representation and maintenance. They have different neural basis and age-related change. However, the conclusions of two components’ developmental patterns haven’t reach agreement. It is known that context processing is important in math performance. However, the two components of context processing may play different roles on math. Based on this, the author explored the development of context representation and maintenance, as well as its relationship with math ability.The participates were 118 primary school students and their grade were from 1 to 3.There are 38 first grade students (21male,17female),40 second grade students (22male,18female) and 40 third grade students (20male,20female). We used an AX version of continuous performance task and manipulated the proportion of target trials as well as the delay between cue and probe. As for math ability, we used the number operations test and mathematical reasoning test from WIAT-II. The AX-CPT required the participants to make target response to probe X only when it came after cue A. The experiment had 4 types of trials, AX, AY, BX, BY. The performance on AY and BX, especially its relationship could measure the developmental degree of context representation. Under the long delay of cue and probe, the performance measured context maintenance. We used Repeated-Measures ANOVA to compare lower grades students’ performance on different trial types under two delay conditions. And we used regression analysis to assess the ability of context processing to predict mathematical abilities. It showed that:1)Lower grades primary school students already had mature ability of representing context, because under short delay, their performance on AY was worse than that on BX; however, their ability of maintaining context haven’t reach mature stage, because under long delay, their performance on AY and BX did not have significant difference;2)Their sensitivity to cue have gradual difference. The first grade students performed worse than the second grades and third grades, the second grades and third grades did not have significant difference;3)The ability of context maintenance could predict the first grades’mathematical reasoning.