Sensitivity to numerosity is not a unique visuospatial psychophysical predictor of mathematical ability

Abstract

Sensitivity to visual numerosity has previously been shown to predict human mathematical performance. However, it is not clear whether it is discrimination of numerosity per se that is predictive of mathematical ability, or whether the association is driven by more general task demands. To test this notion we had over 300 participants (ranging in age from 6 to 73 years) perform a symbolic mathematics test and 4 different visuospatial matching tasks. The visual tasks involved matching 2 clusters of Gabor elements for their numerosity, density, size or orientation by a method of adjustment. Partial correlation and regression analyses showed that sensitivity to visual numerosity, sensitivity to visual orientation and mathematical education level predict a significant proportion of shared as well as unique variance in mathematics scores. These findings suggest that sensitivity to visual numerosity is not a unique visual psychophysical predictor of mathematical ability. Instead, the data are consistent with mathematics representing a multi-factorial process that shares resources with a number of visuospatial tasks.