At Penn's Developing Minds Lab, we study the primitive number sense that children come into the world with even before they learn to count. Our work is aimed at testing the idea that primitive number sense helps children gain a foothold into learning math. We study changes that happen in the brain as children become symbolic mathematical thinkers. Our studies include infants, school aged-children and adults and use a host of behavioral and neurobiological tools...
Emily Szkudlarek defended her dissertation this summer and is now a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her thesis explores the role of intuitive arithmetic of developing mathematical skill.