An electrophysiological study of discrete number conservation in children

Abstract

Auditory averaged evoked responses (AERs) were collected from six scalp locations over left and right hemispheres of 10 children. The AERs were collected while the children were involved in either a conservation task or a control task involving number equality. Principal components analysis/analysis of variance (PCA/ANOVA) of the conservation task AER data allowed the author to identify two AER components related to conservation. A bilateral component at 500 msec and a right hemisphere lateralized component at 300 msec allowed discrimination between nonconserving and conserving children for the conservation task. PCA/ANOVA of the control‐task AER data revealed no differences between conserving and nonconserving children. The author interpreted these findings as indicating the existence of AER components that reflect conservation ability in children. This interpretation was supported by a discriminant function analysis of the AER data collected during the two tasks. The discriminant function analyses of the conservation task AER data allowed the author to discriminate between the conserving and nonconserving children with 80% accuracy. The discriminant function analysis of the control‐task AER data did not allow significant discrimination of the conserving and nonconserving children.