title: Number conservation is related to children's prefrontal inhibitory control: an fMRI study of a piagetian task.
abstract: Although young children can accurately determine that two rows contain the same number of coins when they are placed in a one-to-one correspondence, children younger than 7 years of age erroneously think that the longer row contains more coins when the coins in one of the rows are spread apart. To demonstrate that prefrontal inhibitory control is necessary to succeed at this task (Piaget's conservation-of-number task), we studied the relationship between the percentage of BOLD signal changes in the brain areas activated in this developmental task and behavioral performance on a Stroop task and a Backward Digit Span task. The level of activation in the right insula/inferior frontal gyrus was selectively related to inhibitory control efficiency (i.e., the Stroop task), whereas the activation in the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) was selectively related to the ability to manipulate numerical information in working memory (i.e., the Backward Digit Span task). Taken together, the results indicate that to acquire number conservation, children's brains must not only activate the reversibility of cognitive operations (supported by the IPS) but also inhibit a misleading length-equal-number strategy (supported by the right insula/inferior frontal gyrus).
authors: Laboratoire de Pychologie du Développement et de l'Éducation de l'enfant (LaPsyDÉ, Unité CNRS 3521), Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France. nicolas.poirel@parisdescartes.fr
authors: Nicolas
authors: N
authors: Poirel
authors: Grégoire
authors: G
authors: Borst
authors: Grégory
authors: G
authors: Simon
authors: Sandrine
authors: S
authors: Rossi
authors: Mathieu
authors: M
authors: Cassotti
authors: Arlette
authors: A
authors: Pineau
authors: Olivier
authors: O
authors: Houdé
mesh_terms: D001519:Behavior; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis