Dept of Mathematics Education seminar: 10 June 2026

[14:00-15:00] Leverhulme Lecture (40 mins Presentation + 20 mins Q&A)

Helena Osana, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Understanding One: Challenges in Children’s Understanding of Units

This lecture focuses on children’s understanding of units from early counting to more advanced concepts involving measurement and composite units. It reviews research on how children construct the idea of “one” as both a countable entity and a unit that can be iterated and nested within higher-order structures. Common difficulties are examined, including treating collections of units as wholes, coordinating multiple units, and understanding number as a structure of embedded units. Together, these perspectives provide a nuanced account of why unit concepts are persistently challenging.

[15:05-16:00] Presentation 1 (40 mins Presentation + 15 mins Q&A)

Marie-Josee Bisson, Department of Mathematics Education, Loughborough University 

Cross-linguistic influences on word learning: Implications for acquiring and processing number words in another language.

My research investigates how people learn new words in another language and what facilitates this process. I have identified key factors influencing successful learning, including item-related variables such as cross-linguistic orthographic similarity, which facilitates initial form-meaning mapping (Bisson 2023).  Learning context also matters (e.g., incidental vs. intentional learning; Bisson, in press), as do individual-differences predictors such as working memory and phonological abilities and their interaction with learning context (Bisson et al., 2021). In this presentation, I will summarise my prior research and looking ahead, introduce a project examining the impact of cross-linguistic similarity on number word learning. The proposed work sits within my broader programme of research on language learning but allows a specific look at the earliest stages of number word learning, linking language research to mathematical cognition. 

[16:05-17:00] Presentation 2 (40 mins Presentation + 15 mins Q&A)

Sylvia Gattas, Learning Brain Lab, UCL, Institute of Education

Autonomic regulation as a developmental precursor to mathematics anxiety

Mathematics anxiety (MA) involves negative affective responses, such as rumination and heightened physiological arousal, that disrupt executive function during both mathematical learning and performance. Evidence suggests that vulnerability to MA may emerge as early as preschool, raising questions about whether self- or parent-reports, or physiological measures—state or trait—are most reliable for understanding variability in children’s ability to regulate cognitive and physiological states under challenge (Cipora et al., 2022; Ramirez et al., 2018). Cardiac vagal control, indexed by high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), supports attentional control and cognitive flexibility and is sensitive to anxiety-related regulatory demands (Thayer & Lane, 2009). Past research has shown that regulatory capacity remediates negative effects of anxiety in performance (Daker et al., 2023) and in children’s school outcomes (Obradovic et al., 2010), but it has yet to examine within the state of learning. Examining how autonomic regulation unfolds during learning and carries forward into testing may therefore clarify early pathways to risk and resilience in education.

Research Aim(s)

This project investigated autonomic regulation during both learning and testing as a mechanistic precursor to MA. Study 1 examined whether state- or trait-level behavioural and physiological measures are more correlated with mathematical performance. Study 2 examined whether dynamic patterns of (HF-HRV) during learning predicted subsequent regulation and performance during testing, modelled using generalized additive mixed models, indicating transfer of autonomic regulation across contexts.

Materials and Methods

Eighty-one children aged 4–8 years and twenty-five adults completed a novel symbol learning task followed by testing. Continuous electrocardiography (ECG) was recorded during baseline, learning, and testing phases, alongside behavioural and questionnaire measures. HF-HRV was derived using frequency-domain analyses and segmented into 30-second epochs to capture time-resolved autonomic dynamics. Trait regulation was indexed using baseline HF-HRV and parental-reports, while state regulation was indexed using mean and dynamic HF-HRV during learning and testing, alongside on-task self-report. Mixed-effects models assessed trait versus state predictors of performance (Study 1), and dynamic models examined learning-to-testing transfer and allostatic efficiency (Study 2).

Results

Preliminary results indicated that baseline HF-HRV was the most related to performance (r = 41, p < .001). Dynamic analyses revealed that children who showed early HF-HRV variability followed by stabilisation during learning maintained more efficient regulation during testing. In contrast, sustained autonomic instability during learning was associated with poorer testing performance.

Discussion

By jointly examining learning and testing phases, this study demonstrates that autonomic regulation during learning shapes later performance, providing a plausible developmental mechanism for MA susceptibility. Supporting physiological regulation during learning—and learning how to increase challenge without increasing stress—may help promote resilience across mathematical developmental stages.