Department of Psychology Prof. Avishai Henik has won a European Research Council advanced grant of over 2 million Euros - the organization’s most prestigious.
It is BGU’s first ERC advanced grant, although University faculty members have won several starting grants. What’s more, the judges gave Henik’s proposal top marks.
ERC Advanced Grants allow exceptional established research leaders of any nationality and any age to pursue ground-breaking, high-risk projects that open new directions in their respective research fields or other domains, according to information provided by the Council.
Henik’s proposal is entitled “Size Matters in Numerical Cognition.” “The goal of the research is to study how important the ability to perceive and evaluate sizes is to the development of numerical ability. For example, it is possible that comparison of sizes and amounts (e.g., which glass has more water?) and evaluation of continuous magnitudes (e.g., how much water is in the glass?) are core abilities.
“These skills are the basis for the development of numerical cognition. The current research will examine human abilities in this area, the underlying brain system involved, and the possibility that this system (perception and evaluation of sizes and amounts) is the very first system (i.e., core system) that helped develop the number sense (i.e., basic numerical skills),” according to Henik.
“One of the most important human skills that predict personal achievement in life is mathematical ability. How are numbers represented in our cognitive system? What are the mental operations involved and what are the brain mechanisms that serve these operations? Researchers across the world, in the areas of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, invest time and effort in attempts to answer these and similar questions. Importantly, in the last two decades we have witnessed impressive strides forward in studies of numerical cognition and its deficiencies. The accepted view is that we are born with an innate ability to compare quantities; children learn very early to count, understand the numerical system, and acquire what is generally called the number sense,” he continued.
“Most researchers agree that the number sense is based on a core system centered on the ability to count and to compare different groups of items. Moreover, it has been suggested that various mathematical difficulties are due to a deficiency in this core system. Three to six percent of the population suffers from congenital difficulties in this area or what is generally termed developmental dyscalculia (DD) or mathematical learning disability (MLD). Interestingly, the prevalence of DD is similar to that of developmental dyslexia but DD has been much less studied. Only in the last few years have we seen an effort to close the gap in the study of these two learning difficulties,” he added.
Henik offered an example of how to look at mathematical difficulties.
“Numbers represent not only groups of items but also amounts (e.g., how much water?). The drawing above presents a small eight climbing on a big three. There is a certain incongruence in this drawing because the 8 is supposed to be larger than the 3. This is because numbers represent physical sizes and also have their own physical size. Accordingly, when we ask what is larger, an 8 or a 3, it is somewhat difficult (our responding slows down) when the displayed 3 is larger than the displayed 8.
“With respect to difficulties in arithmetic, an interesting question is whether such difficulties are due to problems in perception and evaluation of sizes or from a difficulty in associating sizes with numerical symbols. If such difficulty (a difficulty in perceiving and evaluating sizes) exists and is connected to mathematical disability, it might be possible to identify such difficulty very early on, even before children start learning arithmetic,” he said.
The current research examines a view different than the currently accepted view, according to Henik. It includes research on children and adults who experience typical development of the numerical concepts and mathematical thinking, and children and adults who suffer from atypical development of numerical cognition. In addition, the research proposal includes work with lower animals (i.e., fish). Fish do not have a cerebral cortex, which is thought to be central in mental arithmetic, but they are still able to evaluate sizes very well. The research will also examine computational aspects (i.e., evolutionary algorithms) of the issues described above.
The research will be carried out at the Cognitive Neuropsychology Laboratory in conjunction with researchers from the Departments of Life Sciences and Computer Sciences.
Henik is the incumbent of the Zlotowski Chair in Cognitive Neuropsychology, a former dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences.
The ERC Advanced Grant funding targets researchers who have already established themselves as independent research leaders in their own right. The purpose of the grant is to enable high-risk or unconventional research that could lead to major breakthroughs in the field. The grants are awarded in any research field for five years.