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No Difference in the Neural Underpinnings of Number and Letter Copying in Children: Bayesian Analysis of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Data

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Title: No Difference in the Neural Underpinnings of Number and Letter Copying in Children: Bayesian Analysis of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Data
Language: English
Authors: Soltanlou, Mojtaba (ORCID 0000-0003-1959-1384), Coldea, Andra, Artemenko, Christina, Ehlis, Ann-Christine, Fallgatter, Andreas J., Nuerk, Hans-Christoph, Dresler, Thomas
Source: Mind, Brain, and Education. Nov 2019 13(4):313-325.
Availability: Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 13
Publication Date: 2019
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Grade 5
Intermediate Grades
Middle Schools
Grade 6
Descriptors: Brain Hemisphere Functions, Spectroscopy, Numbers, Alphabets, Grade 5, Grade 6, Elementary School Students, Diagnostic Tests, Computer Assisted Testing, Bayesian Statistics, Duplication
DOI: 10.1111/mbe.12225
ISSN: 1751-2271
Abstract: It is under debate whether the neural representation of numbers and letters might rely on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In the present study, a total of 47 children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and sixth grade (Experiment 2) simply copied numbers and letters on a touch screen while brain activation changes were recorded by means of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS data of both experiments and a joint analysis revealed that a shared neural network, particularly in the left hemisphere, was activated in response to both number and letter copying. Interestingly, no difference was observed in brain activation patterns between these two stimuli, as revealed by Bayesian analysis. Our findings indicate that both number and letter copying lead to similar brain activation in children. We further suggest methodological and applied applications of these findings in the frame of educational neuroscience.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2019
Accession Number: EJ1235058
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0139742747;[309x]01nov.19;2019Nov21.02:33;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0139742747-1">No Difference in the Neural Underpinnings of Number and Letter Copying in Children: Bayesian Analysis of Functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy Data </title> <p>It is under debate whether the neural representation of numbers and letters might rely on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In the present study, a total of 47 children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and sixth grade (Experiment 2) simply copied numbers and letters on a touch screen while brain activation changes were recorded by means of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS data of both experiments and a joint analysis revealed that a shared neural network, particularly in the left hemisphere, was activated in response to both number and letter copying. Interestingly, no difference was observed in brain activation patterns between these two stimuli, as revealed by Bayesian analysis. Our findings indicate that both number and letter copying lead to similar brain activation in children. We further suggest methodological and applied applications of these findings in the frame of educational neuroscience.</p> <p>Number and letter symbols have emerged late in the history of humanity, but are now an indispensable addition to our daily lives. Although the brain assigns a lot of resources for number and letter recognition, it is under debate whether their processing relies on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In addition, it is unclear how these neural networks develop across the lifespan. In adults, the literature is conflicting. Some studies have found that the neural mechanisms for the visual recognition of numbers and letters create a double dissociation: numbers activate a widespread right neural network, while letters activate a left network (Carreiras, Monahan, Lizarazu, Dunabeitia, & Molinaro, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref1">10</reflink>]; Park, Hebrank, Polk, & Park, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref2">38</reflink>]). However, bilateral activation of neural networks in response to numbers and letters has also been reported (Ansari, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref3">4</reflink>]; Arsalidou & Taylor, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref4">5</reflink>]; Libertus, Brannon, & Pelphrey, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref5">32</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-2">Neural Correlates of Number Processing</hd> <p>Many brain areas have been associated with number processing. A specialization for symbolic number representation has been identified in the ventral occipito‐temporal cortex, an area known as number form area (NFA) (Dehaene & Cohen, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref6">19</reflink>]). Studies have shown that NFA is activated bilaterally when participants are visually presented with Arabic numerals, in both nonexpert (Grotheer, Herrmann, & Kovács, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref7">22</reflink>]) and expert mathematicians (Amalric & Dehaene, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref8">2</reflink>]). Furthermore, using a visual‐to‐music sensory paradigm, Abboud, Maidenbaum, Dehaene, and Amedi ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref9">1</reflink>]) observed activation of the right NFA in blind participants during number processing, which was functionally connected to the magnitude processing network in both blind and control participants. This suggests that visual experience is not necessary to detect the activation of NFA in response to number symbols (Abboud et al., [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref10">1</reflink>]). Moreover, it has been shown that the right NFA is significantly connected to the right intraparietal cortex—a brain area also involved in mathematical processing—already from an age of 3 years old, before entering formal education. Furthermore, this connectivity is gradually increasing with age to a bilateral network in the intraparietal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (Nemmi, Schel, & Klingberg, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref11">36</reflink>]).</p> <p>Another area specialized in the number domain is the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). According to the Triple Code Model of number processing (Dehaene, Piazza, Pinel, & Cohen, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref12">20</reflink>]), bilateral IPS activation occurs whenever numbers are manipulated (see also Klein, Suchan, et al., [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref13">29</reflink>]). Number‐specific bilateral IPS activation appears not only in response to visually presented stimuli, but is also elicited during passive listening of numbers (Klein, Moeller, Nuerk, & Willmes, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref14">28</reflink>]). Depending on the task, IPS activation might differ between hemispheres; for instance, the left IPS is the core area in symbolic number processing (Ansari, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref15">3</reflink>]; Piazza, Pinel, Le Bihan, & Dehaene, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref16">41</reflink>]). Nevertheless, a direct comparison of IPS activation during number and letter copying revealed no difference in adults (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref17">6</reflink>]), suggesting no number‐specific activation of the IPS during a nonsemantic number copying task.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-3">Neural Correlates of Letter Processing</hd> <p>The ventral occipito‐temporal cortex, specifically in the left hemisphere, is also the site of the visual word form area (VWFA), which is activated in response to strings of letters and words (Cohen & Dehaene, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref18">14</reflink>]). Pugh et al. ([<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref19">43</reflink>]) suggested that improvements in reading lead to neural activation changes in the VWFA, and gradual increases in the activation of VWFA were related to the meaning of stimuli from letter strings to real words with an increasing similarity to the real word (Vinckier et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref20">60</reflink>]). Similar to NFA, the VWFA was found to be activated in blind participants during Braille reading, indicating that its development is not dependent on visual experience (Reich, Szwed, Cohen, & Amedi, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref21">44</reflink>]). The VWFA has a significantly increased connectivity to Broca's area already from an age of 6 years, connectivity correlated with improved reading ability (Nemmi et al., [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref22">36</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-4">Neural Correlates Overlapping for Number and Letter Processing</hd> <p>Neuroimaging studies have identified a number of brain areas that are involved in processing both numbers and letters. One such area is the superior parietal lobule (SPL). It has been shown that this brain area is involved in visuospatial attention during number processing (Dehaene et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref23">20</reflink>]). In addition, a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study showed that stimulation of the left but not the right SPL facilitates detection of adapted letters during a letter discrimination task (Cattaneo, Rota, Walsh, Vecchi, & Silvanto, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref24">11</reflink>]). The authors suggested that the left SPL is related to letter processing regardless of visual form. Also, greater activation in the left SPL and the left ventral occipito‐temporal areas was found in skilled adult readers, as compared with adults with dyslexia, during a letter‐string comparison task (Reilhac, Peyrin, Demonet, & Valdois, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref25">45</reflink>]). It has been argued that letter recognition—similar to the recognition of other visual stimuli—relies on the same general form recognition system (Turkeltaub, Flowers, Lyon, & Eden, [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref26">58</reflink>]); hence, the SPL plays a domain‐general role for visually presented stimuli regardless of their semantic meaning.</p> <p>The left angular gyrus (AG) and perisylvian language areas such as the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) are also associated with both language processing and verbal representation of numbers (Dehaene et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref27">20</reflink>]). For number processing, activation of these language‐related areas has been interpreted as an increasing reliance and symbolic processing. The left perisylvian areas are involved in letter naming and their activation is explained as retrieval of phonological codes for letter names (Joseph, Cerullo, Farley, Steinmetz, & Mier, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref28">26</reflink>]). Neuroimaging studies revealed that the orthographic, phonological, and lexical‐semantic features of printed words are integrated by the left temporo‐parietal area (Pugh et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref29">43</reflink>]). Therefore, these areas support both number and letter processing. Another domain‐general area is frontal cortex. Frontal activation has also been interpreted as supporting cognitive processing not only during number and letter processing, but even during number and letter copying tasks (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref30">6</reflink>]). Liu et al. ([<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref31">33</reflink>]) reported activation of the bilateral middle frontal gyri (MFGs) in recognition of Chinese characters. However, there are inconsistent findings between number and letter processing literature. For instance, while a meta‐analysis by Arsalidou and Taylor ([<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref32">5</reflink>]) suggests an involvement of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for number processing, James and Gauthier ([<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref33">25</reflink>]) found left‐lateralized activation in the IFG during letter processing. Therefore, depending on the characteristics of the tasks, different parts of frontal cortex might be involved. Furthermore, frontal engagement might be different in the present study of children from the aforementioned studies of adults. While number processing and calculation rely heavily on frontal activation during childhood, its activation decreases by age (Rivera, Reiss, Eckert, & Menon, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref34">46</reflink>]) or even learning (Soltanlou, Artemenko, et al., [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref35">53</reflink>]). Therefore, despite the fact that Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref36">6</reflink>]) observed no difference in frontal activation during number and letter copying in adults, it might be possible that this activation pattern differs in the present child study.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-5">Current Study</hd> <p>Taken together, symbolic number processing and letter processing in adults seem to be more relying both on specialized and partially overlapping underlying neural networks. However, because aforementioned studies mainly used numerical or linguistic tasks which demanded semantic processing (but see Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref37">6</reflink>]), a remaining question is whether typical brain areas for number and letter processing are still active when the task at hand does not necessitate semantical processing of these symbols. At least for transcoding numbers, Cipolotti and Butterworth ([<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref38">13</reflink>]) proposed the existence of an asemantic route, which would not activate number magnitude. More importantly, it is not readily possible to generalize the findings by Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref39">6</reflink>]) to children. For instance, Libertus et al. ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref40">32</reflink>]) showed category‐specific activation of the IPS during a two‐back working memory (WM) task with numbers in adults but not in children. Similarly, they observed category‐specific activation of the left occipito‐temporal area during a two‐back WM task with letters in adults but not in children. They concluded that typical brain areas related to semantic processing of number and letter symbols are not active in children when processing of these symbols is task irrelevant (Libertus et al., [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref41">32</reflink>]).</p> <p>In our view, it is an open question whether number copying, as opposed to letter copying, elicits number‐specific activation (e.g., of the IPS) in children. This question is important because copying can be used as a control task in developmental neuroimaging studies. If number‐specific activation is shown for simply number copying, then subtracting activation due to copying would imply subtraction of semantic number activation, thereby leading to misinforming results in the subtraction paradigm of neuroimaging studies. Therefore, the question we pursue here is whether the previously found neural differences are task specific or refer to the automatic activation of representations associated with number or letter symbols in children. For this, we used the same very simple task for both stimuli: number and letter copying, which in principle could be conducted without semantic number magnitude or linguistic phonological coactivation.</p> <p>We set out to explore the underlying neural mechanisms involved in number and letter copying by using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in fifth graders (Experiment 1), with replication in sixth graders (Experiment 2). Soltanlou, Sitnikova, Nuerk, and Dresler ([<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref42">55</reflink>]) proposed fNIRS as an appropriate technique to investigate brain activation changes in children, even during motorically active mathematics and language processing, such as in a production paradigm. According to our hypothesis, number and letter copying activates a bilateral fronto‐parietal network in children, and following the findings for adults by Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref43">6</reflink>]), we expect no difference between the neural correlates of number and letter copying. In order to test the absence of a difference between these two tasks (null hypothesis), Bayesian inference statistics will be used. However, it is also possible that number‐specific magnitude activation, particularly in the right IPS, is more pronounced during number copying, while left‐lateralized temporo‐parietal brain areas are more active during letter copying.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-6">EXPERIMENT 1</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-7">Materials and Methods</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-8">Participants</hd> <p>Twenty‐six typically developing children in fifth grade participated in this study. Two participants were excluded from the analysis: one due to technical problems and one due to discontinuation resulting from a headache. The final sample (14 boys, age: <emph>M =</emph> 11.1; <emph>SD</emph> = 0.5 years) did not display any history of neuropsychological impairment; all participants were right handed and had intelligence (IQ) and memory abilities in the normal range (cf. Table ). Children and parents gave written consent and received reimbursement for participation in the study. All study procedures were in line with the latest revision of the Declaration of Helsinki and were approved by the ethics committee of the University Hospital of Tuebingen.</p> <p>Mean and SDs of Neuropsychological Data for Experiments 1 and 2</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th>Experiment</th><th align="center">Similarities</th><th align="center">Matrix Reasoning</th><th align="center">Verbal STM</th><th align="center">Verbal WM</th><th align="center">Visuospatial STM</th><th align="center">Visuospatial WM</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>1</td><td>108.5 ± 9.6</td><td>107.6 ± 10.9</td><td>5.1 ± 0.8</td><td>4.4 ± 1.0</td><td>5.4 ± 1.2</td><td>5.1 ± 1.2</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>108.5 ± 11.3</td><td>107.9 ± 10.7</td><td>5.0 ± 0.9</td><td>4.0 ± 0.9</td><td>5.3 ± 0.8</td><td>5.3 ± 1.0</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>1 <emph>Notes</emph>. <emph>N</emph> = 24 in Experiment 1. <emph>N</emph> = 23 in Experiment 2. Normalized values of intelligence subtests of similarities and matrix reasoning (50 + 5 × raw score). Maximum possible score for memory tests was 9. STM: short‐term memory; WM: working memory.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-9">Experimental Task</hd> <p>Children took part in a computerized task in which they were asked to copy number and letter strings. Each condition consisted of four blocks containing two‐number/letter strings. In the number copying condition, number strings consisted of digits 1–9 equally distributed at each position (unit, decade) with parity balanced across stimuli. In the letter copying condition, the stimuli were created by substituting the digits in the number sequences with the nine most frequently used consonants in the German language (N, S, R, T, D, H, L, C, G). The task was run on a touchscreen device in Presentation software (<ulink href="http://www.neurobs.com">www.neurobs.com</ulink>). There was one set of 25 two‐stimulus sequences for each condition, and the stimuli were written in white against a black background (font: Times New Roman, size: 100‐point) in the form of "XX = [space]."</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-10">Neuropsychological Tasks</hd> <p>The intellectual ability and memory capacities of the participants were assessed. In order to measure intellectual ability, children had to complete two subtests (similarities and matrix reasoning) of a German variant of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale (Petermann, Petermann, & Wechsler, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref44">40</reflink>]).</p> <p>For memory dimensions (cf. Table ), forward recall of the Corsi block‐tapping task (Corsi, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref45">15</reflink>]) and letter span task were used as measures of visuospatial and verbal short‐term memory (STM), respectively, while backward recall evaluated the children's visuospatial and verbal WM, respectively (Cowan, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref46">17</reflink>]; for details of the procedure see Soltanlou, Pixner, & Nuerk, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref47">54</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-11">fNIRS</hd> <p>fNIRS was recorded with the ETG‐4000 Optical Topography System (Hitachi Medical Corporation, Tokyo, Japan). The 22‐channel arrays of optodes (eight light emitters and seven photodetectors) for each hemisphere were embedded in a cap (Brain Products GbmH., Herrsching, Germany) covering both left and right fronto‐temporo‐parietal areas (Artemenko, Soltanlou, Ehlis, Nuerk, & Dresler, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref48">7</reflink>]; Soltanlou et al., [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref49">52</reflink>]). Adjacent optodes were placed at a distance of 30 mm; 14 channels on the left hemisphere and 18 on the right were placed over P3 (left) and P4 (right), respectively, and the probe sets were horizontally oriented in the direction of F3 (left) and F4 (right) for this row of channels. The sources emitted near‐infrared light of two wavelengths (695 ± 20 and 830 ± 20 nm; sampling rate: 10 Hz). The absorption changes in oxygenated (O<subs>2</subs>Hb) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb) concentrations for every fNIRS channel were obtained by applying a modified Beer–Lambert law. The AAL (automatic anatomical labeling) atlas (Tzourio‐Mazoyer et al., [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref50">59</reflink>]) in SPM software (<ulink href="http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm">http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm</ulink>) was used to calculate the locations of the corresponding cortical areas based on a virtual registration method (Rorden & Brett, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref51">47</reflink>]; Singh, Okamoto, Dan, Jurcak, & Dan, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref52">51</reflink>]; Tsuzuki et al., [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref53">57</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-12">Procedure</hd> <p>Children were assessed individually in a light‐attenuated room. They were seated about 40 cm in front of a touch screen and used a touch pen to write down the answers—copying number and letter strings—while fNIRS was recorded. They were asked to write the strings as quickly and correctly as they could. After writing the answer, the next trial was presented by pressing a gray box on the right side of the screen. Each condition consisted of four blocks of 45 s, which were presented pseudorandomly across participants, followed by 20 s of rest. Within the blocks, each item was presented for a maximum of 10 s or until a response was recorded, with a 0.5 s interstimulus interval. Stimuli were randomized and repeated whenever the whole set was presented in the allocated time interval. The task was self‐paced, and no feedback was given. This experiment was part of a larger project (Soltanlou, Artemenko, et al., [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref54">53</reflink>]; Soltanlou et al., [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref55">52</reflink>]), but here, we focus on the neural correlates of number and letter copying.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-13">Analysis</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-14">Behavioral</hd> <p>Response times (RTs) were calculated by the interval from presenting a trial to pressing the gray box. For trimming the data, RTs beyond ±3<emph>SD</emph> of the mean were sequentially excluded for each child separately until no outliers were detected (Nuerk, Weger, & Willmes, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref56">37</reflink>]). Moreover, the number of presented trials was calculated for each condition. Because of the simplicity of the tasks and overall accuracy of nearly 100%, the accuracy was not further analyzed. Paired <emph>t</emph>‐tests were conducted to compare mean RTs and number of presented trials between the two conditions.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-15">fNIRS</hd> <p>Changes in O<subs>2</subs>Hb and HHb concentrations were continuously recorded for the 22 channels per hemisphere. These changes indirectly represent cortical activation through the neurovascular coupling. Data were analyzed using custom routines of the commercial software package MATLAB (The MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA). Signals were band‐pass filtered by 0.01 to 0.2 Hz to remove long‐term drifts of baseline and high‐frequency cardiac and respiratory activity (Haeussinger et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref57">23</reflink>]; Sasai, Homae, Watanabe, & Taga, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref58">49</reflink>]; Tong & Frederick, [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref59">56</reflink>]). After visual inspection, noisy channels were interpolated by the surrounding channels (i.e., 14% of all channels across experiments and participants), and noisy blocks were excluded from further analysis (i.e., 6% of all blocks across experiments and participants). Further, motion artifacts and nonevoked systemic effects, particularly likely in children, were diminished based on the correlation‐based signal improvement (CBSI) method, which is based on an expected negative correlation of concentration changes of O<subs>2</subs>Hb and HHb (Cui, Bray, & Reiss, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref60">18</reflink>]). The resulting CBSI‐Hb signal was considered for further analysis. Thereafter, the amplitude of each 45 s block was corrected using a 5 s preblock baseline. The blocks were averaged for each participant and each condition.</p> <p>Independent <emph>t</emph>‐tests against zero were calculated for each experimental condition. Supplemental paired <emph>t</emph>‐tests were performed to explore the contrast between the two conditions. The significance level was.05 and corrected with the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons for the 22 channels per hemisphere (Benjamini & Hochberg, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref61">8</reflink>]). According to our hypothesis and following the findings by Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref62">6</reflink>]), we expect no difference between the neural correlates of number and letter copying. Therefore, we further used Bayesian analysis using JASP (Version 0.9, JASP Team, 2018) to test the null (i.e., no difference between conditions) hypothesis. Therefore, the Bayes factors were calculated in order to evaluate evidence in favor of the null hypothesis (BF<subs>01</subs>). According to the categorization of degrees of evidence by Kass and Raftery ([<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref63">27</reflink>]), BF<subs>01</subs> of 1‐3, 3‐20, 20‐150, and >150 are respectively interpreted as weak, positive, strong, and very strong.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-16">Results</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-17">Behavioral</hd> <p>Children were significantly faster in number copying (2,618 ± 464 ms) than letter copying (2,966 ± 473 ms), <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref64">23</reflink>) = 6.03, <emph>p</emph> < .001. Consequently, they were presented significantly more number strings (55.83 ± 6.96) than letter strings (51.08 ± 6.72), <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref65">23</reflink>) = 4.75, <emph>p</emph> < .001.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-18">fNIRS</hd> <p>Number copying elicited significant activation in bilateral fronto‐tempo‐parietal areas (cf. Table  and Figure ). For letter copying, significant activation was observed only in left fronto‐parietal areas (cf. Table  and Figure ). Although number copying elicited more widespread activation, no significant difference was observed in the direct contrast of the two conditions.</p> <p>Neural Activation for Number and Letter Copying in Experiment 1 (Fifth Graders)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th>Brain Area</th><th align="left">Channels</th><th align="center"><italic>t</italic></th><th align="center"><italic>p</italic></th><th align="center">Channels</th><th align="center"><italic>t</italic></th><th align="center"><italic>p</italic></th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Number processing</td><td align="left" /><td align="char" /><td align="char" /><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>4.93</td><td> <.001</td><td align="center">R 36</td><td>4.52</td><td><.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 22</td><td>3.40</td><td>  .002</td><td align="center">R 41</td><td>2.53</td><td>.019</td></tr><tr><td>IFG</td><td>L 4</td><td>2.66</td><td>  .014</td><td align="center">R 23</td><td>2.55</td><td>.018</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 9</td><td>3.84</td><td>  .001</td><td align="center">R 27</td><td>2.76</td><td>.011</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 13</td><td>4.19</td><td> <.001</td><td align="center">R 32</td><td>3.58</td><td>.002</td></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 17</td><td>3.69</td><td>  .001</td><td align="center">R 37</td><td>3.14</td><td>.005</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 21</td><td>6.11</td><td> <.001</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>STG</td><td>L 2</td><td>4.72</td><td> <.001</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MTG</td><td>L 1</td><td>3.65</td><td>  .001</td><td align="center">R 26</td><td>3.58</td><td>.002</td></tr><tr><td>PostCG</td><td>L 16</td><td>5.59</td><td> <.001</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 20</td><td>3.54</td><td>  .002</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 6</td><td>4.19</td><td> <.001</td><td align="center">R 30</td><td>3.83</td><td>.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 11</td><td>2.81</td><td>  .010</td><td align="center">R 39</td><td>3.45</td><td>.002</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 15</td><td>3.48</td><td>  .002</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>AG</td><td>L 10</td><td>4.00</td><td>  .001</td><td align="center">R 35</td><td>3.58</td><td>.002</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 14</td><td>3.64</td><td>  .001</td><td align="center">R 40</td><td>3.07</td><td>.005</td></tr><tr><td>SPL/IPS</td><td>L 19</td><td>3.21</td><td>  .004</td><td align="center">R 44</td><td>3.31</td><td>.003</td></tr><tr><td /><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Letter processing</td><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>3.64</td><td>  .001</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>IFG</td><td>L 13</td><td>3.28</td><td>  .003</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 21</td><td>3.15</td><td>  .004</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 15</td><td>3.11</td><td>  .005</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>AG</td><td>L 10</td><td>3.13</td><td>  .005</td><td /><td /><td /></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>2 <emph>Notes</emph>. Only significant channels (<emph>p</emph> < .05, FDR corrected) are given for the left (L) and right (R) hemisphere as indicated by one‐sample <emph>t</emph>‐tests. MFG = middle frontal gyrus, IFG = inferior frontal gyrus, PreCG = precentral gyrus, STG = superior temporal gyrus, MTG = middle temporal gyrus, PostCG = postcentral gyrus, SMG = supramarginal gyrus, AG = angular gyrus, SPL = superior parietal lobule, IPS = intraparietal sulcus.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/309X/01nov19/mbe12225-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="mbe12225-fig-0001.jpg" title="fNIRS results for Experiment 1 in fifth graders. Brain activation during number and letter copying." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-20">EXPERIMENT 2</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-21">Materials and Methods</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-22">Participants</hd> <p>The overall setting and the fNIRS measurements were identical to Experiment 1. Twenty‐six typically developing children in sixth grade participated in this study. Because of technical problems, three participants were excluded from the analysis. The final sample (18 boys, age: <emph>M =</emph> 12.1; <emph>SD</emph> = 0.3 years) did not display any history of neuropsychological impairments; all participants were right handed, except for two children. All children had IQ and memory abilities in the normal range (cf. Table ).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-23">Experimental Task</hd> <p>The setting of the experimental task was identical to Experiment 1. However, for this experiment, half of the four blocks contained two‐number/letter strings and the remaining half three‐number/letter strings. There was one set of 25 two‐stimulus and one set of 25 three‐stimulus sequences for each condition, generated as previously described and presented in the form of "XX = [space]" and "XXX = [space]."</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-24">Procedure and Analysis</hd> <p>The experimental procedure and the analyses were comparable with Experiment 1, except that the next trial was prompted by pressing a keyboard button. This experiment was also part of a larger project (Artemenko, Soltanlou, et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref66">7</reflink>]), but here, we focus on the neural correlates of number and letter copying.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-25">Results</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-26">Behavioral</hd> <p>As in Experiment 1, children were significantly faster in number copying (2,800 ± 642 ms) than letter copying (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref67">3</reflink>,014 ± 818 ms), <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref68">22</reflink>) = 2.92, <emph>p</emph> = .008. Therefore, they were presented with significantly more number strings (54.30 ± 12.67) than letter strings (50.48 ± 12.95), <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref69">22</reflink>) = 6.36, <emph>p</emph> < .001.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-27">fNIRS</hd> <p>Number copying elicited significant activation in left fronto‐parietal areas and in the right parietal area (cf. Table  and Figure ). For letter copying, significant activation was observed in left fronto‐parietal areas and in the right parietal area (cf. Table  and Figure ). Although number copying again elicited more widespread activation, no significant difference was observed in the direct contrast of the two conditions.</p> <p>Neural Activation for Number and Letter Copying in Experiment 2 (Sixth Graders)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th>Brain Area</th><th align="left">Channels</th><th align="center"><italic>t</italic></th><th align="center"><italic>p</italic></th><th align="center">Channels</th><th align="center"><italic>t</italic></th><th align="center"><italic>p</italic></th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Number processing</td><td align="left" /><td align="char" /><td align="char" /><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>2.91</td><td>.008</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 21</td><td>3.50</td><td>.002</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PostCG</td><td>L 12</td><td>4.04</td><td>.001</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 16</td><td>3.20</td><td>.004</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 6</td><td>2.84</td><td>.010</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 11</td><td>3.33</td><td>.003</td><td align="center">R 34</td><td>2.92</td><td>.008</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 15</td><td>3.99</td><td>.001</td><td align="center">R 39</td><td>2.90</td><td>.008</td></tr><tr><td /><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Letter processing</td><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>2.83</td><td>.010</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 17</td><td>3.05</td><td>.006</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 21</td><td>3.07</td><td>.006</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PostCG</td><td>L 12</td><td>4.08</td><td><.001</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 16</td><td>3.29</td><td>.003</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 20</td><td>3.53</td><td>.002</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 15</td><td>3.76</td><td>.001</td><td align="center">R 34</td><td>2.80</td><td>.010</td></tr><tr><td /><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td align="center">R 39</td><td>2.89</td><td>.009</td></tr><tr><td>AG</td><td>L 10</td><td>2.85</td><td>.009</td><td /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SPL/IPS</td><td>L 19</td><td>3.04</td><td>.006</td><td /><td /><td /></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>3 <emph>Notes</emph>. Only significant channels (<emph>p</emph> < .05, FDR corrected) are given for the left (L) and right (R) hemisphere as indicated by one‐sample <emph>t</emph>‐tests. MFG = middle frontal gyrus, PreCG = precentral gyrus, PostCG = postcentral gyrus, SMG = supramarginal gyrus, AG = angular gyrus, SPL = superior parietal lobule, IPS = intraparietal sulcus.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/309X/01nov19/mbe12225-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="mbe12225-fig-0002.jpg" title="fNIRS results for Experiment 2 in sixth graders. Brain activation during number and letter copying." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0139742747-29">Joint Analysis of fNIRS for Both Grades</hd> <p>In the next step, we collapsed the fNIRS data of both experiments, which gave us a rather large sample for a neuroimaging study of 47 children. We conducted this analysis to examine whether there was any difference between number copying and letters, which may not have been detected in the two experiments on their own. As no significant differences could be observed, neither in behavioral findings nor in fNIRS findings, between the two grades, <emph>ps</emph> > .05, we decided to merge the samples of children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and children in sixth grade (Experiment 2).</p> <p>Number copying elicited significant activation in bilateral fronto‐tempo‐parietal areas (cf. Table  and Figure ). For letter copying, significant activation was observed in left fronto‐tempo‐parietal areas and in right fronto‐parietal areas (cf. Table  and Figure ).[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref70">1</reflink>] Although number copying again elicited more widespread activation, no significant difference was observed in the direct contrast of the letter and number copying conditions.[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref71">2</reflink>]</p> <p>Neural Activation for Number and Letter Copying in the Joint Analysis (Both Grades)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th>Brain Area</th><th align="left">Channels</th><th align="center"><italic>t</italic></th><th align="center"><italic>p</italic></th><th align="center">Channels</th><th align="center"><italic>t</italic></th><th align="center"><italic>p</italic></th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Number processing</td><td align="left" /><td align="char" /><td align="char" /><td align="center" /><td align="char" /><td align="char" /></tr><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>5.19</td><td><.001</td><td>R 36</td><td>4.13</td><td><.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 22</td><td>3.55</td><td>.001</td><td>R 41</td><td>3.08</td><td>.003</td></tr><tr><td>IFG</td><td>L 4</td><td>2.90</td><td>.006</td><td>R 27</td><td>2.91</td><td>.006</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 9</td><td>3.95</td><td><.001</td><td>R 32</td><td>3.58</td><td>.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 13</td><td>4.24</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 17</td><td>4.25</td><td><.001</td><td>R 37</td><td>3.61</td><td>.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 21</td><td>6.49</td><td><.001</td><td>R 42</td><td>2.41</td><td>.020</td></tr><tr><td>STG</td><td>L 2</td><td>3.88</td><td><.001</td><td>R 25</td><td>2.25</td><td>.029</td></tr><tr><td>MTG</td><td>L 1</td><td>3.69</td><td>.001</td><td>R 26</td><td>3.04</td><td>.004</td></tr><tr><td>PostCG</td><td>L 12</td><td>4.39</td><td><.001</td><td>R 43</td><td>2.46</td><td>.018</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 16</td><td>5.90</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 20</td><td>4.22</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 6</td><td>4.94</td><td><.001</td><td>R 30</td><td>4.08</td><td><.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 11</td><td>4.29</td><td><.001</td><td>R 34</td><td>3.22</td><td>.002</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 15</td><td>5.33</td><td><.001</td><td>R 39</td><td>4.45</td><td><.001</td></tr><tr><td>AG</td><td>L 5</td><td>2.58</td><td>.013</td><td>R 35</td><td>3.67</td><td>.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 10</td><td>4.53</td><td><.001</td><td>R 40</td><td>2.91</td><td>.006</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 14</td><td>4.00</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SPL/IPS</td><td>L 19</td><td>4.19</td><td><.001</td><td>R 44</td><td>3.44</td><td>.001</td></tr><tr><td /><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Letter processing</td><td align="left" /><td /><td /><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>4.62</td><td><.001</td><td>R 36</td><td>3.23</td><td>.002</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 22</td><td>3.18</td><td>.003</td><td>R 41</td><td>2.44</td><td>.019</td></tr><tr><td>IFG</td><td>L 13</td><td>3.82</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 17</td><td>3.93</td><td><.001</td><td>R 37</td><td>2.70</td><td>.010</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 21</td><td>4.44</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>STG</td><td>L 2</td><td>2.46</td><td>.018</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>MTG</td><td>L 1</td><td>3.27</td><td>.002</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>PostCG</td><td>L 12</td><td>2.62</td><td>.012</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 16</td><td>4.09</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td /><td>L 20</td><td>4.01</td><td><.001</td><td align="center" /><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 6</td><td>3.99</td><td><.001</td><td>R 30</td><td>2.34</td><td>.024</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 11</td><td>2.33</td><td>.025</td><td>R 34</td><td>2.31</td><td>.025</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 15</td><td>4.88</td><td><.001</td><td>R 39</td><td>3.64</td><td>.001</td></tr><tr><td>AG</td><td>L 10</td><td>4.23</td><td><.001</td><td>R 35</td><td>2.33</td><td>.024</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 14</td><td>2.51</td><td>.016</td><td>R 40</td><td>3.06</td><td>.004</td></tr><tr><td>SPL/IPS</td><td>L 19</td><td>3.97</td><td><.001</td><td>R 44</td><td>3.53</td><td>.001</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>4 <emph>Notes</emph>. Only significant channels (<emph>p</emph> < .05, FDR corrected) are given for the left (L) and right (R) hemisphere as indicated by one‐sample <emph>t</emph>‐tests. MFG = middle frontal gyrus, IFG = inferior frontal gyrus, PreCG = precentral gyrus, STG = superior temporal gyrus, MTG = middle temporal gyrus, PostCG = postcentral gyrus, SMG = supramarginal gyrus, AG = angular gyrus, SPL = superior parietal lobule, IPS = intraparietal sulcus.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/309X/01nov19/mbe12225-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="mbe12225-fig-0003.jpg" title="fNIRS results for both experiments together. Brain activation during number and letter copying." /> </p> <p></p> <p>In order to test for no difference between number and letter copying, Bayesian analysis was conducted. Of the 22 channels on the left side, positive evidence (i.e., BF<subs>01</subs> = 3–20) was observed in 20 channels and weak evidence (i.e., BF<subs>01</subs> = 1–3) was observed in 2 channels in favor of no difference between the number and letter copying. Of the 22 channels on the right side, positive evidence (i.e., BF<subs>01</subs> = 3–20) was observed in 17 channels and weak evidence (i.e., BF<subs>01</subs> = 1–3) was observed in five channels in favor of no difference between the number and letter copying (cf. Table ).</p> <p>Bayesian Analysis for Comparing Neural Activation for Number and Letter Copying in the Joint Analysis (Both Grades)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th>Brain Area</th><th align="left">Channels</th><th align="center">BF<sub>01</sub></th><th align="left">Channels</th><th align="center">BF<sub>01</sub></th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>MFG</td><td>L 18</td><td>6.06</td><td>R 36</td><td>4.52</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 22</td><td>6.31</td><td>R 41</td><td>3.09</td></tr><tr><td>IFG</td><td>L 4</td><td>4.90</td><td>R 23</td><td>3.27</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 9</td><td>1.69</td><td>R 27</td><td>2.15</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 13</td><td>6.05</td><td>R 32</td><td>2.48</td></tr><tr><td>PreCG</td><td>L 8</td><td>3.91</td><td>R 28</td><td>4.91</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 17</td><td>6.27</td><td>R 37</td><td>5.58</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 21</td><td>4.37</td><td>R 42</td><td>4.11</td></tr><tr><td>STG</td><td>L 2</td><td>4.65</td><td>R 24</td><td>6.28</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 3</td><td>5.91</td><td>R 25</td><td>5.14</td></tr><tr><td>MTG</td><td>L 1</td><td>6.23</td><td>R 26</td><td>2.89</td></tr><tr><td>PostCG</td><td>L 12</td><td>5.58</td><td>R 33</td><td>6.30</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 16</td><td>2.45</td><td>R 38</td><td>6.25</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 20</td><td>5.56</td><td>R 43</td><td>6.30</td></tr><tr><td>SMG</td><td>L 6</td><td>5.61</td><td>R 29</td><td>5.23</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 7</td><td>3.37</td><td>R 30</td><td>2.10</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 11</td><td>3.26</td><td>R 34</td><td>4.29</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 15</td><td>6.00</td><td>R 39</td><td>4.91</td></tr><tr><td>AG</td><td>L 5</td><td>6.07</td><td>R 31</td><td>5.06</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 10</td><td>6.13</td><td>R 35</td><td>2.86</td></tr><tr><td /><td>L 14</td><td>3.98</td><td>R 40</td><td>5.58</td></tr><tr><td>SPL/IPS</td><td>L 19</td><td>5.92</td><td>R 44</td><td>4.69</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>5 <emph>Notes</emph>. The degrees of evidence for the null hypothesis (BF<subs>01</subs>) are categorized as: weak (1–3), positive (3–20), strong (20–150), and very strong (>150). MFG = middle frontal gyrus, IFG = inferior frontal gyrus, PreCG = precentral gyrus, STG = superior temporal gyrus, MTG = middle temporal gyrus, PostCG = postcentral gyrus, SMG = supramarginal gyrus, AG = angular gyrus, SPL = superior parietal lobule, IPS = intraparietal sulcus.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-31">DISCUSSION</hd> <p>The present study investigated the underlying neural mechanisms of number and letter copying in children. Based on the literature, we have hypothesized that in a nonsemantic copying task, no difference between number and letter copying is to be expected, because the semantics of the stimuli does not need to be encoded in the task. We included two age groups of participants, fifth and sixth graders. Fifth graders engaged more neural areas in the fronto‐tempo‐parietal areas bilaterally during number processing as compared to their older counterparts who have a more pronounced left‐lateralized activation. For letter copying, the reverse was true, with a left‐lateralized activation in younger participants, and a more bilateral activation in older participants. However, despite partially differentially activated areas during number and letter copying, the difference between the two grades did not reach statistical significance in behavioral nor in fNIRS analyses. Hence, the data has been collapsed across ages and the joint analysis revealed no significant difference between number and letter copying in children. Moreover, the Bayesian analysis provided support for the null hypothesis, which was positive evidence (BF<subs>01</subs> > 3) for most of the channels. In the following, we will explain how these two tasks elicited domain‐general cognitive processes in different brain areas, which were not task‐specific in either case.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-32">Neural Correlates of Number Processing</hd> <p>A few brain areas have shown activation only in response to number processing. For example, in the parietal area, the postcentral gyrus was activated bilaterally during number copying, but not during letter copying. This result shows a difference in activation between children and adults, as Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref72">6</reflink>]) reported bilateral activation of the postcentral gyrus both during number and letter copying in adults. In the temporal areas, significant activation was also found bilaterally in the MTG and STG during number copying. Activation of the MTG and STG are associated with retrieving learned information (Eichenbaum, Yonelinas, & Ranganath, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref73">21</reflink>]) and representation of number symbols. Surprisingly, Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref74">6</reflink>]) found only left‐lateralized activation of the STG during number copying. According to the Triple Code Model of number processing (Dehaene et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref75">20</reflink>]), the left MTG and STG, are involved in the verbal representation of numbers (see also Klein, Suchan, et al., [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref76">29</reflink>]). Thereby, number naming, which might happen in our current study in the form of inner speech in children, may elicit activation of these areas. Last, specific activation for number processing was observed also in the frontal areas, where the IFG was activated bilaterally in response to number copying. In adults, the activation of IFG during number copying was found to be left‐lateralized (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref77">6</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-33">Neural Correlates of Letter Processing</hd> <p>Additionally, some differences could be identified in the activation in response to letter copying. In the parietal cortex, letter processing in the postcentral gyrus was left‐lateralized, as compared to the bilateral activation found in response to numbers. Similarly, the temporal lobe activity was left‐lateralized in the MTG and STG, areas which are associated with language processing. In adults, Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref78">6</reflink>]) reported no activation of the STG during letter copying. Recent evidence in children shows increased activation of the left MTG during lexico‐semantic representations, which was observed in the contrast of language versus nonsymbolic number processing (Prado, Mutreja, & Booth, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref79">42</reflink>]). In the present study, number and letter symbols were used, which led to comparable activation of the lexico‐semantic network in the left temporal lobe. Last, in the frontal lobe left‐lateralized activity was observed in the IFG, similar to findings reported in adults (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref80">6</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-34">Neural Correlates Overlapping for Number and Letter Processing</hd> <p>In the parietal areas, the SPL/IPS, SMG, AG, and postcentral gyrus were bilaterally activated during number and letter copying. Artemenko, Coldea, et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref81">6</reflink>]) reported left‐lateralized activation of the SMG and bilateral activation of the SPL/IPS during number copying. However, they found no significant difference between these two conditions in parietal areas. Previous literature has emphasized engagement of all these parietal areas during number processing (Dehaene et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref82">20</reflink>]) and letter processing in a WM task (e.g., Knops, Nuerk, Fimm, Vohn, & Willmes, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref83">31</reflink>]). According to the Triple Code Model of number processing (Dehaene et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref84">20</reflink>]), the SMG and AG are involved in the verbal representation of numbers and retrieval from semantic long‐term memory (Dehaene et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref85">20</reflink>]; Zamarian, Ischebeck, & Delazer, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref86">61</reflink>]; but see Bloechle et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref87">9</reflink>]; Soltanlou, Artemenko, et al., [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref88">53</reflink>]). Therefore, activation of these areas during our tasks might point to automatic semantic retrieval of number and letter symbols. Furthermore, in line with our finding, Matsuo et al. ([<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref89">34</reflink>]) reported right SPL activation during letter copying as a sign of visually presented language processing tasks. The SPL has been suggested to be engaged in visuospatial attention, which serves as a domain‐general process during cognitive tasks such as our visually presented number and letter copying task. So, different parietal areas were active during number and letter copying in the present study, which did not reveal a distinction between the neural underpinning of these two tasks.</p> <p>With respect to frontal areas, the MFG and precentral gyrus were bilaterally activated during number and letter copying. A study of number and letter copying in adults (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref90">6</reflink>]) reported bilateral activation of the MFG and bilateral activation of the precentral gyrus during number copying, but only left‐lateralized activation in letter copying. However, the authors observed no significant difference between these two tasks in frontal areas. The left frontal areas, containing Broca's area, are associated with phonological and semantic operations (Costafreda et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref91">16</reflink>]), which might be involved in number and letter copying (but see James & Gauthier, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref92">25</reflink>]). Activation of the left frontal areas might also support automatic semantic processing of these symbols. The right frontal areas mediate domain‐general cognitive processes, that is, executive functioning and WM (Hampshire, Chamberlain, Monti, Duncan, & Owen, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref93">24</reflink>]; Soltanlou, Artemenko, et al., [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref94">53</reflink>]; Rotzer et al., [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref95">48</reflink>]). Thus, increased activation of these areas during number and letter copying—in which the strings should be kept for some seconds in WM—is expected in children. Activation of the bilateral MFG and IFG during two‐back versus one‐back WM tasks with number and letter stimuli has been also reported in adults (Knops et al., [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref96">31</reflink>]). However, they argue that WM load is not solely related to frontal activation but also to IPS activation as well (for more discussion see Knops et al., [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref97">31</reflink>]). Moreover, in a similar vein, James and Gauthier ([<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref98">25</reflink>]) observed activation of the left precentral gyrus and interpreted it as a general involvement of this area in generating visual‐to‐motor transformations, which is relevant to both copying tasks in this present study.</p> <p>All in all, we concluded that in line with a similar study in adults (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref99">6</reflink>]), number and letter copying leads to shared neural network activation in children. As we discussed above, no significant difference between the neural correlates of these two tasks, which is specific to either task, was observed. This finding is contradictory to a double dissociation between the neural correlates of the visual recognition of numbers and letters reported in adults (Park et al., [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref100">38</reflink>]). Park et al. ([<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref101">38</reflink>]) interpreted this double dissociation as a result of individuals' experience with these arbitrary symbols during life. If this is so, our finding might point to less experience in children as compared to adults, but this is not the case of the similar study in adults (Artemenko, Coldea, et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref102">6</reflink>]). The other possible explanation might be that most of the activation in the aforementioned brain areas are involved in different processes such as visuospatial processing of the symbol forms, and executive functioning and WM. So, each of our tasks might result in activation of different task‐specific processes within the same brain area, which we were not able to detect in our fNIRS study.</p> <p>Furthermore, copying numbers and letters are considered as nonsemantic tasks in the present study. However, even in very basic numerical tasks, such as passive listening, fMRI data suggested some semantic (magnitude) processing of numbers (Klein et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref103">28</reflink>]). Corroborating these earlier findings in another modality and another task, we also observed overlapping activation of some semantic processing areas such as the left fronto‐temporal network was observed in both tasks. On one hand, this finding might suggest semantic processing of both symbols. On the other hand, fNIRS has a rather low spatial resolution and these brain areas are involved in different processes. Therefore, one might also conclude that there is no specific semantic processing of number and letter symbols in children (Libertus et al., [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref104">32</reflink>]). On the basis of our data, we do not wish to draw strong conclusions for or against either case. In order to uncover these possible overlapping activations, future studies using techniques with the much higher spatial resolution are needed.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-35">Limitations</hd> <p>In the current study, we need to consider the following limitations. It has been shown that the representation of symbols is largely held in the fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyri, more specifically, in the VWFA (James & Gauthier, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref105">25</reflink>]; Pernet, Celsis, & Demonet, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref106">39</reflink>]; Turkeltaub et al., [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref107">58</reflink>]) and the visual NFA (Merkley, Wilkey, & Matejko, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref108">35</reflink>]). However, fNIRS may not be able to reliably detect activation of structures, like the fusiform gyrus, that are not directly situated under the skull. Furthermore, the spatial resolution of fNIRS (about 3 cm) may not be fine‐grained enough to optimally assess IPS activation; although the deepest part of the IPS is less than 1 cm from the surface of the cortex (Choi et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref109">12</reflink>]) and fNIRS is capable of measuring 1–1.5 cm of the cortex—3 cm from the scalp—in adults (e.g., Schroeter, Kupka, Mildner, Uludağ, & von Cramon, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref110">50</reflink>]). Additionally, it needs to be noted that in the present study, no additional control condition was used to detect motor‐related activation in the brain; however, the results of the analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) still showed no difference between number and letter copying even after taking behavioral differences into account. Furthermore, general motor‐related brain areas were not relevant for this study because a written production paradigm was used for both tasks, where we were mainly interested in the (possibly semantic or phonological) differences between number and letter copying.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-36">CONCLUSIONS</hd> <p>The present study explored the underlying neural mechanisms involved in number and letter copying in two groups of children—fifth and sixth graders—and in a joint analysis using fNIRS. We were able to identify the cortical structures involved in these two tasks. We found evidence for a shared neural network for number and letter copying, which has been additionally confirmed by Bayesian analyses. This finding shows that in an ecologically valid setting, namely dealing with numbers and letters in a written production as in the academic setting, the neural correlates of simply copying numbers and letters might not differ. Interestingly, the similarity of the findings in the two different samples of children reveals the reliability of fNIRS as an appropriate neuroimaging method in children and in the context of education neuroscience (Soltanlou, Sitnikova, et al., [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref111">55</reflink>]). Further research needs to investigate whether number and letter copying have the same neural correlates at younger and older ages. Moreover, future studies might include additional motor‐control tasks to see if top‐down processes of number and letter copying might affect sensory‐motor activation as compared to copying meaningless strings. Finally, it is important for us to point out that our results hold for a very basic, nonsemantic task, that is, number and letter copying in children. We cannot generally claim that underlying mechanisms of number and letter processing do not differ in children. Even writing might rely on different neural mechanisms for numbers and letters (Klein, Willmes, et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref112">30</reflink>]). However, in this particular experiment, using a nonsemantic task and fNIRS as a brain imaging technique, semantic (magnitude) representations may not be automatically activated, although further investigation is needed to resolve this issue more conclusively.</p> <p>On a methodological level, the current finding offers a basis for researchers who use number and letter copying as control conditions in brain activation subtraction paradigms in fNIRS or EEG studies. Note that because our finding is relevant to production paradigms, it is more suitable for fNIRS and EEG settings rather than for fMRI, which is more sensitive to motion artifacts. Therefore, in the frame of educational neuroscience, our neuroscientific finding might be helpful for experimental designs in academic settings in which children produce the answer to a question rather than verify a certain answer.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-37">CONFLICT OF INTEREST</hd> <p>The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.</p> <hd id="AN0139742747-38">ACKNOWLEDGMENT</hd> <p>We would like to thank all participating children and their parents. This research was funded by a grant from the Science Campus Tuebingen, project 8.4 to HCN supporting MS. MS was also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant [NU 265/3‐1] to HCN, and by the Institutional Strategy of the University of Tübingen (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ZUK 63). All authors are members of the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network [GSC1028], which is funded within the framework of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. Furthermore, ACE was partly supported by the IZKF Tübingen (Junior Research Group, Grant 2115‐0‐0). We would also thank Minako Uga and Ippeita Dan for the great help in preparing the spatial registration and anatomical labeling of fNIRS channels. Finally, we thank our assistants who helped in data collecting and the language proofreading of the manuscript.</p> <ref id="AN0139742747-39"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref9" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> There was no significant brain‐behavioral correlation between brain activation strength and RT or number of presented trials per condition. 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Fallgatter; Hans‐Christoph Nuerk and Thomas Dresler</p> <p>Reported by Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref1"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib38" firstref="ref2"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib32" firstref="ref5"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref6"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib22" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib36" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref12"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib29" firstref="ref13"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib28" firstref="ref14"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib41" firstref="ref16"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref18"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl12" bibid="bib43" firstref="ref19"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl13" bibid="bib60" firstref="ref20"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl14" bibid="bib44" firstref="ref21"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl15" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl16" bibid="bib45" firstref="ref25"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl17" bibid="bib58" firstref="ref26"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl18" bibid="bib26" firstref="ref28"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl19" bibid="bib33" firstref="ref31"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl20" bibid="bib25" firstref="ref33"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl21" bibid="bib46" firstref="ref34"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl22" bibid="bib53" firstref="ref35"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl23" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref38"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl24" bibid="bib55" firstref="ref42"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl25" bibid="bib40" firstref="ref44"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl26" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref45"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl27" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref46"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl28" bibid="bib54" firstref="ref47"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl29" bibid="bib52" firstref="ref49"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl30" bibid="bib59" firstref="ref50"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl31" bibid="bib47" firstref="ref51"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl32" bibid="bib51" firstref="ref52"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl33" bibid="bib57" firstref="ref53"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl34" bibid="bib37" firstref="ref56"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl35" bibid="bib23" firstref="ref57"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl36" bibid="bib49" firstref="ref58"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl37" bibid="bib56" firstref="ref59"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl38" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref60"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl39" bibid="bib27" firstref="ref63"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl40" bibid="bib21" firstref="ref73"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl41" bibid="bib42" firstref="ref79"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl42" bibid="bib31" firstref="ref83"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl43" bibid="bib61" firstref="ref86"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl44" bibid="bib34" firstref="ref89"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl45" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref91"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl46" bibid="bib24" firstref="ref93"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl47" bibid="bib48" firstref="ref95"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl48" bibid="bib39" firstref="ref106"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl49" bibid="bib35" firstref="ref108"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl50" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref109"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl51" bibid="bib50" firstref="ref110"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl52" bibid="bib30" firstref="ref112"></nolink>
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Items – Name: Title
  Label: Title
  Group: Ti
  Data: No Difference in the Neural Underpinnings of Number and Letter Copying in Children: Bayesian Analysis of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Data
– Name: Language
  Label: Language
  Group: Lang
  Data: English
– Name: Author
  Label: Authors
  Group: Au
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Soltanlou%2C+Mojtaba%22">Soltanlou, Mojtaba</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1959-1384">0000-0003-1959-1384</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Coldea%2C+Andra%22">Coldea, Andra</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Artemenko%2C+Christina%22">Artemenko, Christina</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ehlis%2C+Ann-Christine%22">Ehlis, Ann-Christine</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Fallgatter%2C+Andreas+J%2E%22">Fallgatter, Andreas J.</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Nuerk%2C+Hans-Christoph%22">Nuerk, Hans-Christoph</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Dresler%2C+Thomas%22">Dresler, Thomas</searchLink>
– Name: TitleSource
  Label: Source
  Group: Src
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Mind%2C+Brain%2C+and+Education%22"><i>Mind, Brain, and Education</i></searchLink>. Nov 2019 13(4):313-325.
– Name: Avail
  Label: Availability
  Group: Avail
  Data: Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA
– Name: PeerReviewed
  Label: Peer Reviewed
  Group: SrcInfo
  Data: Y
– Name: Pages
  Label: Page Count
  Group: Src
  Data: 13
– Name: DatePubCY
  Label: Publication Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2019
– Name: TypeDocument
  Label: Document Type
  Group: TypDoc
  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
– Name: Audience
  Label: Education Level
  Group: Audnce
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Elementary+Education%22">Elementary Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Grade+5%22">Grade 5</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Intermediate+Grades%22">Intermediate Grades</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Middle+Schools%22">Middle Schools</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Grade+6%22">Grade 6</searchLink>
– Name: Subject
  Label: Descriptors
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Brain+Hemisphere+Functions%22">Brain Hemisphere Functions</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Spectroscopy%22">Spectroscopy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Numbers%22">Numbers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Alphabets%22">Alphabets</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Grade+5%22">Grade 5</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Grade+6%22">Grade 6</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Elementary+School+Students%22">Elementary School Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Diagnostic+Tests%22">Diagnostic Tests</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Computer+Assisted+Testing%22">Computer Assisted Testing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Bayesian+Statistics%22">Bayesian Statistics</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Duplication%22">Duplication</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1111/mbe.12225
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 1751-2271
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: It is under debate whether the neural representation of numbers and letters might rely on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In the present study, a total of 47 children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and sixth grade (Experiment 2) simply copied numbers and letters on a touch screen while brain activation changes were recorded by means of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS data of both experiments and a joint analysis revealed that a shared neural network, particularly in the left hemisphere, was activated in response to both number and letter copying. Interestingly, no difference was observed in brain activation patterns between these two stimuli, as revealed by Bayesian analysis. Our findings indicate that both number and letter copying lead to similar brain activation in children. We further suggest methodological and applied applications of these findings in the frame of educational neuroscience.
– Name: AbstractInfo
  Label: Abstractor
  Group: Ab
  Data: As Provided
– Name: DateEntry
  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2019
– Name: AN
  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1235058
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1235058
RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1111/mbe.12225
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 13
        StartPage: 313
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Brain Hemisphere Functions
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Spectroscopy
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Numbers
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Alphabets
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Grade 5
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Grade 6
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Elementary School Students
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Diagnostic Tests
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Computer Assisted Testing
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Bayesian Statistics
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Duplication
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: No Difference in the Neural Underpinnings of Number and Letter Copying in Children: Bayesian Analysis of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Data
        Type: main
  BibRelationships:
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      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Soltanlou, Mojtaba
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            NameFull: Coldea, Andra
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            NameFull: Artemenko, Christina
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            NameFull: Ehlis, Ann-Christine
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            NameFull: Fallgatter, Andreas J.
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            NameFull: Nuerk, Hans-Christoph
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            NameFull: Dresler, Thomas
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          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 11
              Type: published
              Y: 2019
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 1751-2271
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 13
            – Type: issue
              Value: 4
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Mind, Brain, and Education
              Type: main
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