Neural activity during natural viewing of Sesame Street statistically predicts test scores in early childhood

It is not currently possible to measure the real-world thought process that a child has while observing an actual school lesson. However, if it could be done, children's neural processes would presumably be predictive of what they know. Such neural measures would shed new light on children'...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2013-01, Vol.11 (1), p.e1001462-e1001462
Main Authors: Cantlon, Jessica F, Li, Rosa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Brain
Brain - physiology
Brain research
Brain Waves - physiology
Child
Child psychology
Child, Preschool
Cognition - physiology
Education
Educational aspects
Educational psychology
Experiments
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Health aspects
Humans
Intelligence Tests
Learning - physiology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Mathematics
Medical imaging
Neural circuitry
Neurology
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Physiological aspects
Psychological aspects
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Television
Television programs for children
Young Adult
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Summary:It is not currently possible to measure the real-world thought process that a child has while observing an actual school lesson. However, if it could be done, children's neural processes would presumably be predictive of what they know. Such neural measures would shed new light on children's real-world thought. Toward that goal, this study examines neural processes that are evoked naturalistically, during educational television viewing. Children and adults all watched the same Sesame Street video during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Whole-brain intersubject correlations between the neural timeseries from each child and a group of adults were used to derive maps of "neural maturity" for children. Neural maturity in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), a region with a known role in basic numerical cognition, predicted children's formal mathematics abilities. In contrast, neural maturity in Broca's area correlated with children's verbal abilities, consistent with prior language research. Our data show that children's neural responses while watching complex real-world stimuli predict their cognitive abilities in a content-specific manner. This more ecologically natural paradigm, combined with the novel measure of "neural maturity," provides a new method for studying real-world mathematics development in the brain.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001462