Moriah Sokolowski - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Moriah Sokolowski

Science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) occupations are crucial for economic gro... more Science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) occupations are crucial for economic growth and individual financial stability, yet there is a STEM labour shortage, particularly among women. We examined how individual differences in visual imagery relate to characteristics of STEM occupations-specifically those requiring computational abilities. In a discovery cohort of 2357 online participants, we found that-consistent with prior researchspatial thinking was positively associated with STEM occupations for both males and females. Object imagery (mnemonic vividness), however, was negatively associated with STEM occupations that require computational thinking, possibly because efficient analytical reasoning abilities associate with low object imagery. This negative association was present for males, but not for females. We extended these findings to a sample of 1891 individuals with aphantasia (congenitally low imagery) and a sample of 186 university undergraduates. These results suggest that the well-known influence of spatial imagery is evident across genders, whereas an independent influence of non-spatial and non-visual abstract analytic abilities on computational STEM professions is confined to males. These findings have implications for policy in fostering careers in STEM, particularly for females.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jul 31, 2022

The Cambridge Handbook of Dyslexia and Dyscalculia

Human Brain Mapping

Mental arithmetic is a complex skill of great importance for later academic and life success. Man... more Mental arithmetic is a complex skill of great importance for later academic and life success. Many neuroimaging studies and several meta-analyses have aimed to identify the neural correlates of mental arithmetic. Previous meta-analyses of arithmetic grouped all problem types into a single meta-analytic map, despite evidence suggesting that different types of arithmetic problems are solved using different strategies. We used activation likelihood estimation (ALE) to conduct quantitative meta-analyses of mental arithmetic neuroimaging (n = 31) studies, and subsequently grouped contrasts from the 31 studies into problems that are typically solved using retrieval strategies (retrieval problems) (n = 18) and problems that are typically solved using procedural strategies (procedural problems) (n = 19). Foci were compiled to generate probabilistic maps of activation for mental arithmetic (i.e., all problem types), retrieval problems, and procedural problems. Conjunction and contrast analyses were conducted to examine overlapping and distinct activation for retrieval and procedural problems. The conjunction analysis revealed overlapping activation for retrieval and procedural problems in the bilateral inferior parietal lobules, regions typically associated with magnitude processing. Contrast analyses revealed specific activation in the left angular gyrus for retrieval problems and specific activation in the inferior frontal gyrus and cingulate gyrus for procedural problems. These findings indicate that the neural bases of arithmetic systematically differs according to problem type, providing new insights into the dynamic and task-dependent neural underpinnings of the calculating brain.

WIREs Cognitive Science

Early cognitive neuroscientific research revealed that the hippocampus is crucial for spatial nav... more Early cognitive neuroscientific research revealed that the hippocampus is crucial for spatial navigation in rodents, and for autobiographical episodic memory in humans. Researchers quickly linked these streams to propose that the human hippocampus supports memory through its role in representing space, and research on the link between spatial cognition and episodic memory in humans has proliferated over the past several decades. Different researchers apply the term “spatial” in a variety of contexts, however, and it remains unclear what aspect of space may be critical to memory. Similarly, “episodic” has been defined and tested in different ways. Naturalistic assessment of spatial memory and episodic memory (i.e., episodic autobiographical memory) is required to unify the scale and biological relevance in comparisons of spatial and mnemonic processing. Limitations regarding the translation of rodent to human research, human ontogeny, and inter‐individual variability require greater ...

Behavior Research Methods

Brain Structure and Function

Brain

Neurodevelopmental disorders are categorized and studied according to their manifestations as dis... more Neurodevelopmental disorders are categorized and studied according to their manifestations as distinct syndromes. For instance, congenital prosopagnosia and dyslexia have largely non-overlapping research literatures and clinical pathways for diagnosis and intervention. On the other hand, the high incidence of neurodevelopmental comorbidities or co-existing extreme strengths and weaknesses suggest that transdiagnostic commonalities may be greater than currently appreciated. The core-periphery model holds that brain regions within the stable core perceptual and motor regions are more densely connected to one another compared to regions in the flexible periphery comprising multimodal association regions. This model provides a framework for the interpretation of neural data in normal development and clinical disorders. Considering network-level commonalities reported in studies of neurodevelopmental disorders, variability in multimodal association cortex connectivity may reflect a share...

Supplemental material, CollingOpenPracticesDisclosure for Registered Replication Report on Fische... more Supplemental material, CollingOpenPracticesDisclosure for Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003) by Lincoln J. Colling, Dénes Szűcs, Damiano De Marco, Krzysztof Cipora, Rolf Ulrich, Hans-Christoph Nuerk, Mojtaba Soltanlou, Donna Bryce, Sau-Chin Chen, Philipp Alexander Schroeder, Dion T. Henare, Christine K. Chrystall, Paul M. Corballis, Daniel Ansari, Celia Goffin, H. Moriah Sokolowski, Peter J. B. Hancock, Ailsa E. Millen, Stephen R. H. Langton, Kevin J. Holmes, Mark S. Saviano, Tia A. Tummino, Oliver Lindemann, Rolf A. Zwaan, Jiří Lukavský, Adéla Becková, Marek A. Vranka, Simone Cutini, Irene Cristina Mammarella, Claudio Mulatti, Raoul Bell, Axel Buchner, Laura Mieth, Jan Philipp Röer, Elise Klein, Stefan Huber, Korbinian Moeller, Brenda Ocampo, Juan Lupiáñez, Javier Ortiz-Tudela, Juanma de la Fuente, Julio Santiago, Marc Ouellet, Edward M. Hubbard, Elizabeth Y. Toomarian, Remo Job, Barbara Treccani and Blakeley B. McShane in Advances in Methods a...

Supplemental material, CollingSupplementalMaterial for Registered Replication Report on Fischer, ... more Supplemental material, CollingSupplementalMaterial for Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003) by Lincoln J. Colling, Dénes Szűcs, Damiano De Marco, Krzysztof Cipora, Rolf Ulrich, Hans-Christoph Nuerk, Mojtaba Soltanlou, Donna Bryce, Sau-Chin Chen, Philipp Alexander Schroeder, Dion T. Henare, Christine K. Chrystall, Paul M. Corballis, Daniel Ansari, Celia Goffin, H. Moriah Sokolowski, Peter J. B. Hancock, Ailsa E. Millen, Stephen R. H. Langton, Kevin J. Holmes, Mark S. Saviano, Tia A. Tummino, Oliver Lindemann, Rolf A. Zwaan, Jiří Lukavský, Adéla Becková, Marek A. Vranka, Simone Cutini, Irene Cristina Mammarella, Claudio Mulatti, Raoul Bell, Axel Buchner, Laura Mieth, Jan Philipp Röer, Elise Klein, Stefan Huber, Korbinian Moeller, Brenda Ocampo, Juan Lupiáñez, Javier Ortiz-Tudela, Juanma de la Fuente, Julio Santiago, Marc Ouellet, Edward M. Hubbard, Elizabeth Y. Toomarian, Remo Job, Barbara Treccani and Blakeley B. McShane in Advances in Methods and ...

Occupations are typically characterized in nominal form, a format that limits options for hypothe... more Occupations are typically characterized in nominal form, a format that limits options for hypothesis testing and data analysis. We drew upon ratings of knowledge, skills, and abilities for 966 occupations listed in the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Classification Network (O*NET) database to create an accessible, standardized multidimensional space in which occupations can be quantitatively localized and compared. Principal components analysis revealed that the occupation space comprises three main dimensions that correspond to: 1) the required amount of education and training, 2) the degree to which an occupation falls within a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discipline versus social sciences and humanities, and 3) whether occupations are more mathematical or health-related. Data-driven groupings of related occupations were obtained with hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). We provide a freely accessible tool: Visualization of Latent Components Asses...

Autobiographical memory—memory for our personal past—is a multifaceted mnemonic activity that evo... more Autobiographical memory—memory for our personal past—is a multifaceted mnemonic activity that evolves throughout the lifespan and interacts with numerous other cognitive functions. Retrieving personal past events engages processes of cue specification, search, and elaboration of details within the specified event. The retrieved content varies from specific episodes unique in time and place to more general representations of autobiographical facts (personal semantics). As expected given this complexity, autobiographical memory is mediated by distributed brain networks, with key regions in the medial temporal lobes and their connections to both anterior and posterior cortical regions supporting different levels of specificity in memory retrieval. These patterns only partially overlap with those evoked by laboratory-based episodic memory paradigms. While most empirical work on autobiographical memory focuses on the recall of particular past events, more recent research concerns individ...

Developmental Science, 2021

Which dimension of a set of objects is more salient to young children: number or size? The ‘Build... more Which dimension of a set of objects is more salient to young children: number or size? The ‘Build‐A‐Train’ task was developed and used to examine whether children spontaneously use a number or physical size approach on an un‐cued matching task. In the Build‐A‐Train task, an experimenter assembles a train using one to five blocks of a particular length and asks the child to build the same train. The child's blocks differ in length from the experimenter's blocks, causing the child to build a train that matches based on either the number of blocks or length of the train, as it is not possible to match on both. One hundred and nineteen children between 2 years 2 months and 6 years 0 months of age (M = 4.05, SD = 0.84) completed the Build‐A‐Train task, and the Give‐a‐Number task, a classic task used to assess children's conceptual knowledge of verbal number words. Across train lengths and verbal number knowledge levels, children used a number approach more than a size approac...

Cortex, 2019

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

Cognition, 2019

A large body of research has documented that females experience more math anxiety than males. Res... more A large body of research has documented that females experience more math anxiety than males. Researchers have identified many factors that might explain the relation between sex and math anxiety. In the current study, we present a novel theoretical framework that highlights the importance of examining multiple aspects of processing across different cognitive domains. We use this framework to address the question of what best explains sex differences in math anxiety. One hundred and seventy-five undergraduate students completed a battery of cognitive tasks and affect questionnaires intended to measure actual math ability, perceived math ability, math anxiety, actual spatial ability, perceived spatial ability, and anxiety about situations requiring spatial mental manipulation (spatial anxiety). Results revealed that processes within the spatial domain but not in the mathematical domain mediated the relation between sex and math anxiety, controlling for general anxiety and cognitive ability. Moreover, within the spatial domain, spatial anxiety was the strongest mediator between sex and math anxiety, over actual and perceived spatial ability. Our findings point to spatial anxiety as a key contributor to the commonly reported sex differences in math anxiety. We conclude by raising the possibility that sex differences in math anxiety, may be rooted in sex-related differences in anxiety about or avoidance of spatial strategies in solving mathematical tasks.

Neuropsychologia, Jan 22, 2017

It is currently debated whether numbers are processed using a number-specific system or a general... more It is currently debated whether numbers are processed using a number-specific system or a general magnitude processing system, also used for non-numerical magnitudes such as physical size, duration, or luminance. Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) was used to conduct the first quantitative meta-analysis of 93 empirical neuroimaging papers examining neural activation during numerical and non-numerical magnitude processing. Foci were compiled to generate probabilistic maps of activation for non-numerical magnitudes (e.g. physical size), symbolic numerical magnitudes (e.g. Arabic digits), and nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes (e.g. dot arrays). Conjunction analyses revealed overlapping activation for symbolic, nonsymbolic and non-numerical magnitudes in frontal and parietal lobes. Contrast analyses revealed specific activation in the left superior parietal lobule for symbolic numerical magnitudes. In contrast, small regions in the bilateral precuneus were specifically activated for ...