Dénes Szűcs

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Cambridge

The level of correlation between two phenomena is limited by the accuracy at which these phenomena are measured. Despite numerous group reliability studies, the strength of the fMRI connectivity that can be detected given the within-subject time course reliability remains elusive. Moreover, it is unclear how within-subject time course reliability l...

Background: Math anxiety (MA) and math achievement (MATH) are related, but the direction of their relationship and their predictors are still unclear. Aims: We tested whether MATH predicts MA (Deficit Theory), MA predicts MATH (Debilitating Anxiety Theory), or whether MA and MATH have reciprocal relationships (Reciprocal Theory). Further, we establ...

Introduction Math anxiety (MA) is an academic anxiety about learning, doing, and evaluating mathematics, usually studied in school populations and adults. However, MA likely has its origins before children go to school. For example, studies have shown that general anxiety (GA) for everyday events is less separable from MA in primary than in early s...

The level of correlation between two phenomena is limited by the accuracy at which these phenomena are measured. Despite numerous group reliability studies, the strength of the fMRI connectivity correlation that can be detected given underlying within subject time course reliability remains elusive. Moreover, it is unclear how within subject time c...

Background Math anxiety (MA) is a worldwide appearing academic anxiety that can affect student mental health and deter students from math and science‐related career choices. Method Using the Arabic version of the Modified‐Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (m‐AMAS), the prevalence of MA was investigated in a very large sample of students ( N = 10093)...

The biological, social, and individual-level foundations of mathematics development are typically studied in isolation. However, isolated study of these areas can only offer limited understanding. In order to facilitate a holistic, integrative view of the field, here, we review recent studies in several of the above domains, focusing on how individ...

Mathematics anxiety (MA) is an academic anxiety related to doing, learning and testing mathematics. MA can negatively affect mathematics performance, motivation and maths-heavy science and technology-related career choices. Previous data suggest that subjective perceptions and interpretations of students are key in the genesis of MA. Here, based on...

In this paper, we develop tools for statistical inference on replicated realizations of spatiotemporal processes that are locally time-harmonizable. Our method estimates both the rescaled spatial time-varying Loève-spectrum and the spatial time-varying dual-frequency coherence function under realistic modeling assumptions. We construct confidence i...

The distribution of effect sizes may offer insights about the research done and reported in a scientific field. We have evaluated 12 412 manually collected correlation effect sizes (Sample 1) and 31 157 computer-extracted correlation effect sizes (Sample 2) published in journals focused on social or developmental psychology. Sample 1 consisted of 2...

Scientific journals may counter the misuse, misreporting, and misinterpretation of statistics by providing guidance to authors. We described the nature and prevalence of statistical guidance at 15 journals (top-ranked by Impact Factor) in each of 22 scientific disciplines across five high-level domains (N = 330 journals). The frequency of statistic...

Mathematics is one of the core subjects in education and a critical factor in driving future life success. Thus, understanding how children learn to master numerical concepts and mathematical skills is of vital importance in the education domain. Behavioral outcomes on tasks are influenced by a variety of individual and shared (for example, context...

The relationship between anxiety and mathematics has often been investigated in the literature. Different forms of anxiety have been evaluated, with math anxiety (MA) and test anxiety (TA) consistently being associated with various aspects of mathematics. In this meta-analysis, we have evaluated the impact of these forms of anxiety, distinguishing...

Scientific journals may counter the misuse and misinterpretation of statistical methods by providing statistical guidance to authors. Here, we sought to assess the nature and prevalence of statistical guidance offered to authors by 15 journals (top-ranked by Impact Factor) in each of 22 scientific disciplines (N = 330 journals). For each journal, t...

Replication studies that contradict prior findings may facilitate scientific self-correction by triggering a reappraisal of the original studies; however, the research community’s response to replication results has not been studied systematically. One approach for gauging responses to replication results is to examine how they affect citations to...

Background Two hypotheses were tested regarding the characteristics of children with mathematical learning disabilities (MLD): (a) that children with MLD would have a ‘core deficit’ in basic number processing skills; and (b) that children with MLD would be at the end of a developmental continuum and have impairments in many cognitive skills. Metho...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2000797.].

The replication crisis has prompted many to call for statistical reform within the psychological sciences. Here we examine issues within Frequentist statistics that may have led to the replication crisis, and we examine the alternative---Bayesian statistics---that many have suggested as a replacement. The Frequentist approach and the Bayesian appro...

Poor response to treatment is a defining characteristic of reading disorder. In the present systematic review and meta-analysis, we found that the overall average effect size for treatment efficacy was modest, with a mean standardized difference of 0.38. Small true effects, combined with the difficulty to recruit large samples, seriously challenge...

Science anxiety refers to students’ negative emotions about learning science. Across two studies, we investigated the psychometric properties of the newly developed Abbreviated Science Anxiety Scale (ASAS), which was adapted from the modified Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (m-AMAS) (Carey E., 2017). Using a sample of students in grades 7 to 10 (N =...

Replication studies that contradict prior findings may facilitate scientific self-correction by triggering a reappraisal of the original studies; however, the research community's response to replication results has not been studied systematically. One approach for gauging responses to replication results is to examine how they impact citations to...

We evaluated 1038 of the most cited structural and functional (fMRI) magnetic resonance brain imaging papers (1161 studies) published during 1990-2012 and 270 papers (300 studies) published in top neuroimaging journals in 2017 and 2018. 96% of highly cited experimental fMRI studies had a single group of participants and these studies had median sam...

The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for...

We determined the relative importance of the so‐called approximate number system, symbolic number comparison and verbal and spatial short‐term and working memory capacity for mathematics achievement in 1254 Grade 2, 4 and 6 children. The large sample size assured high power and low false report probability and allowed us to determine effect sizes p...

We evaluated 1038 of the most cited structural and functional (fMRI) magnetic resonance brain imaging papers (1161 studies) published during 1990-2012 and 273 papers (302 studies) published in top neuroimaging journals in 2017 and 2018. 96% of highly cited experimental fMRI studies had a single group of participants and these studies had median sam...

In this paper we develop a novel methodology for studying the dynamic functional connectivity within the brain from EEG traces. Our observations consist of replicated realizations of spatio-temporal processes that are locally time-harmonizable. We propose a novel method to estimate both the spatial time-varying Loeve-spectrum and the spatial time-v...

Currently dominant cognitive neuroscience theories of developmental dyscalculia (DD) suggest that it is related to the domain specific impairment of the simple number processing ability (number sense) of the brain, residing in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) (Piazza et al., 2010; Isaac et al., 2001). However, behavioral and neuroimaging research als...

The replication crisis has prompted many to call for statistical reform within the psychological sciences. Here we examine issues within Frequentist statistics that may have led to the replication crisis, and we examine the alternative---Bayesian statistics---that many have suggested as a replacement. The Frequentist approach and the Bayesian appro...

A negative correlation between math anxiety and mathematics performance is frequently reported. Thus, some may assume that high levels of mathematics anxiety are associated with poor mathematical understanding. However, no previous research has clearly measured the association between mathematics anxiety and mathematical learning disability. To fil...

Most mathematical cognition research has focused on understanding normal adult function and child development as well as mildly and moderately impaired mathematical skill, often labeled developmental dyscalculia and/or mathematical learning disability. In contrast, much less research is available on cognitive and neural correlates of gifted/excelle...

We review how stress induction, time pressure manipulations and math anxiety can interfere with or modulate selection of problem-solving strategies (henceforth “strategy selection”) in arithmetical tasks. Nineteen relevant articles were identified, which contain references to strategy selection and time limit (or time manipulations), with some also...

This study examined visual, spatial‐sequential, and spatial‐simultaneous working memory ( WM ) performance in children with mathematical learning disability ( MLD ) and low mathematics achievement ( LMA ) compared with typically developing ( TD ) children. Groups were matched on reading decoding performance and verbal intelligence. Besides statisti...

This study examined visual, spatial-sequential, and spatial-simultaneous working memory (WM) performance in children with mathematical learning disability (MLD) and low mathematics achievement (LMA) compared with typically developing (TD) children. Groups were matched on reading decoding performance and verbal intelligence. Besides statistical sign...

Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) has several shortcomings that are likely contributing factors behind the widely debated replication crisis of (cognitive) neuroscience, psychology, and biomedical science in general. We review these shortcomings and suggest that, after sustained negative experience, NHST should no longer be the default, d...

Introduction Individuals with high levels of mathematics anxiety are more likely to have other forms of anxiety, such as general anxiety and test anxiety, and tend to have some math performance decrement compared to those with low math anxiety. However, it is unclear how the anxiety forms cluster in individuals, or how the presence of other anxiety...

INTRODUCTION: Individuals with high levels of mathematics anxiety are more likely to have other forms of anxiety, such as general anxiety and test anxiety, and tend to have some math performance decrement compared to those with low math anxiety. However, it is unclear how the anxiety forms cluster in individuals, or how the presence of other anxiet...

We have empirically assessed the distribution of published effect sizes and estimated power by analyzing 26,841 statistical records from 3,801 cognitive neuroscience and psychology papers published recently. The reported median effect size was D = 0.93 (interquartile range: 0.64–1.46) for nominally statistically significant results and D = 0.24 (0....

t value distributions when all negative and positive results are published (df = 22; D = 0.75; α = 0.05 for both panels). (A) Illustration of effect size exaggeration due to lack of power. ±t(α) stand for the critical t values. The figure depicts the probability density of t values under a mixture model (Eq 11) assuming a 70% proportion of one-samp...

The extracted t-value distribution. (A) The one dimensional probability density distribution of extracted t-values. (B) The two-dimensional t-value by degrees of freedom distribution. The significance threshold [p≤(α = 0.05)] is marked by the white curve. The density of records is shown by the colorbar on the right. (TIF)

Data in Matlab format. (MAT)

Supporting Methods. (DOCX)

Journal information for the three subfields investigated. 5-year journal impact factors used in the study; the number of records in journals; the number of papers by journals and the average number of records per paper. (DOCX)

Matlab code. (M)

We have empirically assessed the distribution of published effect sizes and estimated power by analyzing 26,841 statistical records from 3,801 cognitive neuroscience and psychology papers published recently. The reported median effect size was D = 0.93 (interquartile range: 0.64-1.46) for nominally statistically significant results and D = 0.24 (0....

2016 Elsevier GmbHA popular suggestion states that an evolutionarily grounded analogue magnitude representation, also called an approximate number system (ANS) or ‘number sense’ underlies human mathematical knowledge. During recent years many studies aimed to train the ANS with the intention of transferring improvements to symbolic arithmetic. Here...

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.The conjunction fallacy is a violation of a very basic rule of probability. Interestingly, although committing the fallacy seems irrational, adults are no less susceptible to the fallacy than young children. In Experiment 1, by employing tasks where the conjunctive response option involved...

Recent studies have highlighted the fact that some tasks used to study symbolic number representations are confounded by judgments about physical similarity. Here, we investigated whether the contribution of physical similarity and numerical representation differed in the often-used symbolic same-different, numerical comparison, physical comparison...

Mathematics anxiety (MA) can be observed in children from primary school age into the teenage years and adulthood, but many MA rating scales are only suitable for use with adults or older adolescents. We have adapted one such rating scale, the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS), to be used with British children aged 8–13. In this study, we asses...

Mathematics anxiety (MA) can be observed in children from primary school age into the teenage years and adulthood, but many MA rating scales are only suitable for use with adults or older adolescents. We have adapted one such rating scale, the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS), to be used with British children aged 8-13. In this study, we asses...

Recent studies have highlighted the fact that some tasks used to study symbolic number representations are confounded by judgments about physical similarity. Here, we investigated whether the contribution of physical similarity and numerical representation differed in the often used symbolic same-different, numerical comparison, physical comparison...

Several researchers assume that the so-called approximate number system (ANS) is an innate underlying mechanism of numerical processing. ANS acuity is typically measured in nonsymbolic magnitude comparison tasks. However, some serious confounds threaten task validity as evidence suggests that perceptual processing overrides numerical processing. In...

Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) has several shortcomings that are likely contributing factors behind the widely debated replication crisis of psychology, cognitive neuroscience and biomedical science in general. We review these shortcomings and suggest that, after about 60 years of negative experience, NHST should no longer be the defau...

The conjunction fallacy is a violation of a very basic rule of probability. Interestingly, although committing the fallacy seems irrational, adults are no less susceptible to the fallacy than young children. In Experiment 1, by employing tasks where the conjunctive response option involved two non-representative items, we found a large reduction in...

ERP mean amplitude and latencies for each condition. MA: mean amplitude, LAT: Latency; FCz: Fronto-central electrode; Fz: Frontal electrode; Cz: Central electrode; GC: Go Congruent; GI: Go Incongruent; NGC: Nogo Congruent; NGI: Nogo Incongruent. (XLSX)

Reaction time and Accuracy for each condition. RT: Reaction Time; GC: Go Congruent; GI: Go Incongruent; NGC: Nogo Congruent; NGI: Nogo Incongruent. (XLSX)

Inhibitory control is a core function that allows us to resist interference from our surroundings and to stop an ongoing action. To date, it is not clear whether inhibitory control is a single process or whether it is composed of different processes. Further, whether these processes are separate or clustered in childhood is under debate. In this st...

There is increasing concern about the replicability of studies in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Hidden data dredging (also called p-hacking) is a major contributor to this crisis because it substantially increases Type I error resulting in a much larger proportion of false positive findings than the usually expected 5%. In order to build b...

We have empirically assessed the distribution of published effect sizes and estimated power by extracting more than 100,000 statistical records from about 10,000 cognitive neuroscience and psychology papers published during the past 5 years. The reported median effect size was d=0.93 (inter-quartile range: 0.64-1.46) for nominally statistically sig...

Phase entrainment of neuronal oscillations is thought to play a central role in encoding speech. Children with developmental dyslexia show impaired phonological processing of speech, proposed theoretically to be related to atypical phase entrainment to slower temporal modulations in speech (< 10Hz). While studies of children with dyslexia have foun...

Mathematical anxiety (MA) is a feeling of apprehension and fear related to mathematics (e.g., Ashcraft, 2002). High levels of MA have serious implications for a person's life prospects, as they can lead to an avoidance of elective maths courses, which, in turn, affects people's career opportunities (e.g., Hembree, 1990). The societal importance of...

El presente estudio examina la relación entre la ansiedad matemática y el desempeño matemático, en un grupo de estudiantes colombianos. Un total de 296 estudiantes entre 8 y 16 años de edad participaron en la investigación. Se realizaron análisis por género y grado escolar, controlando por otros tipos de ansiedad (i.e., general y relacionada con ex...

Working memory allows complex information to be remembered and manipulated over short periods of time. Correlations between working memory and mathematics achievement have been shown across the lifespan. However, only a few studies have examined the potentially distinct contributions of domain-specific visuospatial and verbal working memory resourc...

A large body of research suggests that mathematical learning disability (MLD) is related to working memory impairment. Here, I organize part of this literature through a meta-analysis of 36 studies with 665 MLD and 1049 control participants. I demonstrate that one subtype of MLD is associated with reading problems and weak verbal short-term and wor...

The attentional blink (AB) represents a cognitive deficit in reporting the second of two targets (T2), when that second target appears 200-600 msec after the first (T1). However, it is unclear how this paradigm impacts the subjective visibility (that is, the conscious perception) of T2, and whether the temporal profile of T2 report accuracy matches...

Human attention fluctuates across time, and even when stimuli have identical physical characteristics and the task demands are the same, relevant information is sometimes consciously perceived and at other times not. A typical example of this phenomenon is the attentional blink, where participants show a robust deficit in reporting the second of tw...

Maths anxiety (MA) is a debilitating negative emotional reaction towards mathematics. However, MA research in primary and early secondary school is surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. Here we tested primary and secondary students' maths and reading performance and their maths and general anxiety (GA). We examined gender differences, developmental...

This review considers the two possible causal directions between mathematics anxiety (MA) and poor mathematics performance. Either poor maths performance may elicit MA (referred to as the Deficit Theory), or MA may reduce future maths performance (referred to as the Debilitating Anxiety Model). The evidence is in conflict: the Deficit Theory is sup...

In regards to numerical cognition and working memory, it is an open question as to whether numbers are stored into and retrieved from a central abstract representation or from separate notation-specific representations. This study seeks to help answer this by utilizing the numeral modality effect (NME) in three experiments to explore how numbers ar...

Although many children encounter difficulties in arithmetic, the underlying cognitive and emotive factors are still not fully understood. This study examined verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) performance in children with developmental dyscalculia (DD) and high mathematics anxiety (MA) compared with typically de...

This study investigated the role of impaired inhibitory control as a factor underlying attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children with ADHD and typically developing children completed an animal Stroop task while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The lateralized readiness potential and event-related brain potentials associated...

The relationship between executive functions (inhibitory control and working memory) and metacognitive skills was investigated by applying correlational and regression analyses to data collected from two groups of children. To date, research in this area has lacked a theoretical model for considering these relationships; here we propose and test su...

Our ability to allocate attention at different moments in time can sometimes fail to select stimuli occurring in close succession, preventing visual information from reaching awareness. This so-called attentional blink (AB) occurs when the second of two targets (T2) is presented closely after the first (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RS...

Although several studies have compared the representation of fractions and decimals, no study has investigated whether fractions and decimals, as two types of rational numbers, share a common representation of magnitude. The current study aimed to answer the question of whether fractions and decimals share a common representation of magnitude and w...

Recent research suggests that motivation improves cognitive functions but the particular mechanisms and precise behavioural conditions involved in such improvement still remain unknown. Particularly, it is unclear when in time and in which conditions these mechanisms are engaged. In the present study, we aimed to look at the neural markers of cogni...

Numerosity estimation and comparison tasks are often used to measure the acuity of the approximate number system (ANS), a mechanism which allows extracting numerosity from an array of dots independently from several visual cues (e.g. area extended by the dots). This idea is supported by studies showing that numerosity can be processed while these v...

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have detected several characteristic consecutive amplitude modulations in both implicit and explicit mental arithmetic tasks. Implicit tasks typically focused on the arithmetic relatedness effect (in which performance is affected by semantic associations between numbers) while explicit tasks focused on the dist...

Several studies assumed that the analysis of numerical information happens in a fast and automatic manner in the human brain. Utilizing the high temporal resolution of electroencephalography (EEG) in a passive oddball adaptation paradigm, we compared event-related brain potentials (ERPs) evoked by unattended shape changes and unattended numerosity...

Recent studies have indicated that people have a strong tendency to compare fractions based on constituent numerators or denominators. This is called componential processing. This study explored whether componential processing was preferred in tasks involving high stimuli variability and high contextual interference, when fractions could be compare...

In everyday life, distracting stimuli often interfere with daily tasks, and disrupt successful task performance. The attentional blink paradigm (a deficit in reporting the second target (T2) in a rapid stream of visual stimuli) allows for an investigation of disruption by rapidly appearing stimuli. Specifically, the magnitude of the attentional bli...

We examined the representation of two-digit decimals through studying distance and compatibility effects in magnitude comparison tasks in four experiments. Using number pairs with different leftmost digits, we found both the second digit distance effect and compatibility effect with two-digit integers but only the second digit distance effect with...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of numerical cognition by bringing together writing by leading researchers in psychology, neuroscience, and education, covering work using different methodological approaches in humans and animals. During the last decade there had been an explosion of studies and new findings with theoretical and translat...

We determined how various cognitive abilities, including several measures of a proposed domain-specific number sense, relate to mathematical competence in nearly 100 9- year-old children with normal reading skill. Results are consistent with an extended number processing network and suggest that important processing nodes of this network are phonol...

Tests of regression assumptions for the best multiple linear regression model shown in Figure 2C.