Abstracts - Earli

fourth talk will address the question of how psychometric intelligence affects brain functioningduring knowledge processing. The discussant will give an outlook on further research questionsthat require interdisciplinary collaboration.Finding the right level of explanation: The educational implications of neuroscienceRalph Schumacher, Humboldt University, GermanyThe desire for founding educational reform on a sound empirical basis has coincided with a periodof impressive progress in the field of neuroscience and wide public interest in its findings, leadingto an ongoing debate about the potential of neuroscience to inform education reform. But isneuroscience really suited to provide specific instructions for improving learning conditions atschool? Or is it too underdetermined with regard to psychological and pedagogical explanations tooffer such advice? This paper explores the educational implications of neuroscience from theperspective of theory of science. The first part of this paper emphasizes the distinctness andautonomy of psychological, pedagogical and neuroscientific explanations and argues that therelationship between these levels of explanation is best captured by the recent ‘supervenience’model of the mind. Accordingly, although mental states are always realized by brain states,psychological and pedagogical concepts cannot be reduced to neuroscientific concepts. The secondpart illustrates the significance of neuroscience for psychological and pedagogical research onlearning and instruction by developmental cognitive and learning deficits like, e.g. dyslexia.Hence, neuroscientific research on those deficits is of psychological and pedagogical importancebecause it reveals differences that are not observable at the behavioural level. The third partconcentrates on the difference between biologically determined learning processes and learning atschool. Since in the case of learning at school it is not biologically determined which factorsinitiate learning processes, and how these learning processes are executed, the description of thepreconditions of this type of learning has to go beyond descriptions of preconditions to be met bythe human brain. In particular, preconditions of this kind of learning are primarily knowledgepreconditions. Since we need psychological concepts to describe them, neuroscience is in principleunderdetermined with regard to learning conditions at school.Behavioural and brain mechanisms underlying children’s understanding of numerical magnitude:implications for educationDaniel Ansari, University of Western Ontario, CanadaWhich is bigger 1 or 9? To answer this question one must have an understanding of the quantitiesassociated with numerical symbols and the numerical relationship between them. Thisunderstanding represents a fundamental building block of children’s mathematical development. Ithas been repeatedly shown that when adults and children compare which of two numbers is larger,they are faster when the numbers are numerically far apart (e.g. 1 vs. 9) compared to those closetogether (e.g. 1 vs. 2). This so-called "numerical distance effect" (NDE) is thought to reflect anunderlying mental number line on which numbers that are close together share morerepresentational features than those far apart. In this talk, behavioral and brain-imaging data willbe presented which employ the NDE as a paradigm to explore a.) How children develop anunderstanding of numerical quantity b.) How these changes are related to individual differences inmathematical competence and c.) What underlying changes in brain activation are associated withchildren’s developing understanding of numerical quantity. Specifically, data will be presentedwhich demonstrate that the NDE undergoes significant developmental changes and, moreover, thatindividual differences in the size of children’s NDE are significantly related to performance onstandardized tests of mathematics but not reading ability. These behavioral finding do not only– 395 –