Mark Leikin
University of Haifa, Faculty of Education, Faculty Member
- Bilingualism, Bilingualism and cognition, ERP (Cognitive Psychology), Electrophysiology, Morphology and Syntax, Reading, and 9 moreSemitic languages, Hebrew Language, Arabic Language and Linguistics, Russian Language, Cognitve Linguistics and Neurolinguistics, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Giftedness, and Creativityedit
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This paper presents study that investigates brain activity (using ERP methodology) of male adolescents when solving short problems in algebra and geometry. The study design links mathematics education research with neuro-cognitive... more
This paper presents study that investigates brain activity (using ERP methodology) of male adolescents when solving short problems in algebra and geometry. The study design links mathematics education research with neuro-cognitive studies. We performed a comparative analysis of brain activity associated with the translation from visual to symbolic representations of mathematical objects in algebra and geometry. The findings demonstrate that electrical activity associated with the performance of geometrical tasks is stronger than that associated with solving algebraic tasks. Additionally, we found different scalp topography of the brain activity associated with algebraic and geometric tasks. Based on these results, we argue that problem solving in algebra and geometry are related to different patterns of brain activity.
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The intriguing phenomenon of insight (also known as the "Aha!" moment) has provoked a long-standing conflict over its cognitive mechanism. The special-process theory posits insight as a unique, unconscious mechanism. Conversely,... more
The intriguing phenomenon of insight (also known as the "Aha!" moment) has provoked a long-standing conflict over its cognitive mechanism. The special-process theory posits insight as a unique, unconscious mechanism. Conversely, the business-as-usual theory conceptualizes insight processing as ordinary and similar to non-insight, i.e., analytic, incremental, and attention demanding. To resolve this conflict, participants completed cognitive tests and solved four types of problems: verbal insight, spatial insight, verbal non-insight, and spatial non-insight. These problems were solved under three conditions: silence (control), inner speech suppression (articulatory suppression), and non-verbal attentional demands (spatial tapping). Interestingly, insight problem solving differed from verbal non-insight, but resembled spatial non-insight problem solving. Solving insight and spatial non-insight problems substantially benefitted from spatial and near verbal analogical thinking...
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This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on morphological awareness of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (mean age – 5:4). Four groups of children participated in the study: (1)... more
This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on morphological awareness of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (mean age – 5:4). Four groups of children participated in the study: (1) 50 Arabic-speaking monolingual speakers; (2) 50 Hebrew-speaking monolingual speakers; (3) 50 Arabic/Hebrew bilingual speakers; and (4) 50 Hebrew/Arabic bilingual speakers. Participants from the bilingual groups were sequential non-balanced bilingual speakers who started learning a second language at ages 3–4 in a bilingual Arabic/Hebrew kindergarten. All children performed two tasks on inflectional morphology and three tasks on derivational morphology in one or both languages. To examine inflectional morphology, domain plural nouns were chosen because of their linear nature in both Hebrew and Arabic and because inflectional plural-noun morphology is acquired very early. In derivational morphology, the focus was on the verbs because of their high to...
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This paper addresses the neuro-cognitive characterization of super mathematically gifted high school students. The research population consisted of three groups of students excelling in mathematics: super mathematically gifted (S-MG),... more
This paper addresses the neuro-cognitive characterization of super mathematically gifted high school students. The research population consisted of three groups of students excelling in mathematics: super mathematically gifted (S-MG), generally gifted students who excel in school mathematics (G-EM), and students who excel in school mathematics but are not identified as being generally gifted (NG-EM). An Event Related Potentials (ERP) research methodology was employed to examine behavioral and electrophysiological measures associated with insight-based and learning-based problem solving. Forty-two male adolescents participated in the study. Analysis of the electrical potentials evoked when solving these two distinct types of problems revealed three types of neuro-efficiency effects, which highlight the different characteristics of electrical activity of super mathematically gifted students. These characteristics are predominantly task-dependent, emerge at different stages of the task and are reflected in different scalp topography.
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Introduction by Mark Leikin, Mila Schwartz, and Yishai Tobin .- Part I. Language and Literacy in Multilingual Society. Chapter 1. Relevance of the Linguistic Coding Difference Hypothesis to English as an Additional Language of Literacy in... more
Introduction by Mark Leikin, Mila Schwartz, and Yishai Tobin .- Part I. Language and Literacy in Multilingual Society. Chapter 1. Relevance of the Linguistic Coding Difference Hypothesis to English as an Additional Language of Literacy in Israel by Janina Kahn-Horwitz, Richard L. Sparks, and Zahava Goldstein . Chapter 2. Literacy Reflexes of Arabic Diglossia by Elinor Haddad . Chapter 3. Multilingualism Among Israeli Arabs, and the Neuropsychology of Reading in Different Languages by Zohar Eviatar and Raphiq Ibrahim .- Part II. Academic Achievement of Children Coming from Immigrant Families. Chapter 4. Cognitive, Language, and Literacy Development in Socio-Culturally Vulnerable School Children: The Case of Ethiopian Israeli Children by Esther Geva and Michal Shany . Chapter 5. Second Generation Immigrants: A Socio-linguistic Approach of Linguistic Development Within Framework of Family Language Policy by Mila Schwartz . Chapter 6. Understanding Language Achievement of Immigrants in Schools: The Role of Multiple Academic Languages by Tamar Levin and Elana Shohamy .- Part III. Multilingual Acquisition and Processing. Chapter 7. Adjective Inflection in Hebrew: A Psycholinguistic Study in Speakers of Russian, English and Arabic Compared with Native Hebrew Speakers by Iris Alfi-Shabtay and Dorit Ravid . Chapter 8. Verb Inflections Indicators of Bilingual SLI: Qualitative vs. Quantitative Measurements by Sharon Armon-Lotem, Galit Adam, Anat Blass, Jonathan Fine, Efrat Harel, Elinor Saiegh-Haddad, and Joel Walters. Chapter 9. Procedural and Declarative Memory in the Acquisition of Morphological Knowledge: A Model for Second Language Acquisition in Adults by Sara Ferman and Avi Karni . Chapter 10. Reading L1 and L2: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence: A Comparison between Regular and Dyslexic Readers by Zvia Breznitz and Liat Fabian . Chapter 11. Identification of Grammatical Functions in Two Languages by Mark Leikin and Elina Ritvas
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The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Hebrew as a window into the development of inflectional morphology among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. Our participants... more
The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Hebrew as a window into the development of inflectional morphology among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. Our participants were six early sequential bilingual children between 36 and 42 months of age at the beginning of the study, who acquired Russian (L1) at home and at preschool within a ‘first language first approach’ and whose age at the onset of their acquisition of Hebrew (L2) was about 3 years. We investigated both qualitative and quantitative features of noun pluralization in Hebrew (L2) acquisition in order to determine (1) whether early sequential bilingual children are delayed or accelerated in this domain; (2) whether they show similar or different patterns of errors in comparison to the L1 children; and (3) at what age sequential bilingual children acquire regular versus irregular noun plural forms compared with the L1 children. We relied on a multi-faceted ...
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AbstractIn this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluation of giftedness in mathematics. We start with a literature review on the related topics presented so as to situate our suggestions within... more
AbstractIn this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluation of giftedness in mathematics. We start with a literature review on the related topics presented so as to situate our suggestions within the existing research on giftedness and excellence in mathematics. This literature review allows us later to discuss our findings, which are based on neurocognitive data collected in a large-scale multidimensional examination of mathematical giftedness. Sampling procedure in the study was performed based on two orthogonal (in our view) characteristics: general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). In this paper we present findings that lead to a definition of the mathematically gifted population. We present selected results to provide evidence for our findings. In this paper we demonstrate three major findings:A. Effects of G and EM factors are task-dependent both in behavioral and neurophysiological measures: the EM factor has significan...
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The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college... more
The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college students aged 18-27 years. The processing of normal word strings was examined during word-by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self-paced and fast-paced conditions. In both reading conditions, the N100 (late positive) and P300 (late negative) event-related potential (ERP) components were sensitive to such internal processes as recognition of words' syntactic functions. However, an accelerated reading rate influenced the way in which readers processed these sentence elements. In the self-paced condition, the predicate-centered (morphologically based) strategy was used, whereas in the fast-paced condition an approach that was more like the word-order strategy was used. This new pattern was correlated wi...
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The present study aims to examine the relationship between developmental language deficit and children’s creative ability. For this purpose, we compared the performance of preschool children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) on... more
The present study aims to examine the relationship between developmental language deficit and children’s creative ability. For this purpose, we compared the performance of preschool children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) on general and mathematic creativity tests with that of typically developing children. The findings demonstrated that children with SLI performed almost identically on the general creativity task, compared with older preschoolers, and did generally better than children from the younger age group. However, on the mathematic creativity task, they did significantly better statistically than the younger children and worse than children from the older control groups. Thus, the results showed that creativity as a specific cognitive ability seems to develop in children with SLI in the same way as in their typically developing peers but at a slower rate. In addition, our findings demonstrate some degree of dissociation between the cognitive and linguistic abilitie...
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Abstract In order to achieve the present study’s goal – to understand better the phenomenon of mathematical giftedness – we performed a multidimensional examination of the mental processing in students who exhibited mathematical expertise... more
Abstract In order to achieve the present study’s goal – to understand better the phenomenon of mathematical giftedness – we performed a multidimensional examination of the mental processing in students who exhibited mathematical expertise (EM) at the secondary school level. The study included participants from the three groups: students who excelled in school mathematics but were not identified as generally gifted (NG-EM), generally gifted excelling in mathematics (G-EM) students, and students with superior performance in mathematics (S-MG). The research integrated three salient dimensions of mental processing: domain-general cognitive traits, domain-specific (mathematical) creativity, and neuro-cognitive functioning expressed in event-related potentials (ERPs) when solving mathematical problems. In the three study dimensions, we found four types of characteristics of S-MG students: accumulative, G-related, unique and unraveling. This paper defines and exemplifies the characteristics of the four types.
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Little empirical data are available concerning the cognitive abilities of gifted individuals in general and especially those who excel in mathematics. We examined visual processing abilities distinguishing between general giftedness (G)... more
Little empirical data are available concerning the cognitive abilities of gifted individuals in general and especially those who excel in mathematics. We examined visual processing abilities distinguishing between general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). The research population consisted of 190 students from four groups of 10th- to 12th-grade students who differed in their G and EM levels. The students performed a battery of visual processing tests: visual-spatial memory, visual speed of information processing (SVIP), visual perception (VP), and visual attention (VA). The results demonstrate that EM type has a significant effect on the Backward Corsi-Span, whereas G type has a main effect on the Pattern-Recognition test and d2-CP (concentration performance) and d2-E (number of errors) scores in the attention test. SVIP and the fluctuation rate in VA tests (d2-FR) were associated with both G and EM types. The current study identified two different components of visu...
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ABSTRACT A considerable amount of recent evidence suggests that speed of information processing (SIP) may be related to general giftedness as well as contributing to higher mathematical ability. To date, no study has examined SIP... more
ABSTRACT A considerable amount of recent evidence suggests that speed of information processing (SIP) may be related to general giftedness as well as contributing to higher mathematical ability. To date, no study has examined SIP associated with both general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). This paper presents a part of more extensive research aimed at a multidimensional examination of mathematical giftedness, which is a complex function of the G factor and EM factor. The research population consisted of four groups of 10th–11th grade students who differed in their G level and EM level. 190 participants performed five SIP tests: Visual-matching, Cross-out of numbers, Digit-symbol, symbol-search and Simple arithmetic exercises. We found that the G–EM group outperformed the three other study groups on all five tests. The findings reveal that between-group differences in performance on Cross-out of numbers and Simple arithmetic exercises tests are associated with both G and EM factors, whereas especially the G factor had an effect on students’ scores on Digit-symbol, symbol-search and Visual-matching tests. In addition, we found gender differences on the Digit-symbol and symbol-search tests. The results of this study suggest that EM and G factors are interrelated but represent different traits with respect to the SIP.
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... Traditionally it falls into two opposing categories: agrammatism and paragrammatism. The former is defined as a disorder of sentence production characterized by the selective omission of closed-class items (Goodglass, Mayer 1958;... more
... Traditionally it falls into two opposing categories: agrammatism and paragrammatism. The former is defined as a disorder of sentence production characterized by the selective omission of closed-class items (Goodglass, Mayer 1958; Luria 1966; 1970; Tisso et al. 1973). ...
The present study explores the interplay among bilingualism, executive functions and creativity in problem solving among adult male university students. In this context, the associations between two factors critical for understanding the... more
The present study explores the interplay among bilingualism, executive functions and creativity in problem solving among adult male university students. In this context, the associations between two factors critical for understanding the topic, i.e. type of bilingualism (i.e. balanced versus non-balanced bilingualism) and type of creative thinking (i.e. convergent versus divergent thinking) are examined, as well. 28 Russian/Hebrew/English trilinguals (balanced Russian/Hebrew bilinguals), and 25 non-balanced Hebrew/English bilinguals participated in the study. All participants performed several standard tasks on executive functions (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Eriksen flanker task, digit span test, Corsi block-tapping test) and two tests on creativity: Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Figural Form A) and Remote Associates Test (in appropriate languages). The findings showed that the Russian-speaking participants performed better on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, partic...
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In the present study, the authors examined differences in brain activity, as measured by amplitudes and latencies of event related potentials (ERP) components, in Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic and normal readers when processing sentence... more
In the present study, the authors examined differences in brain activity, as measured by amplitudes and latencies of event related potentials (ERP) components, in Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic and normal readers when processing sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 dyslexic and 20 normally reading male college students aged 18-27 years. The authors examined the processing of normal word strings in word-by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self- and fast-paced conditions. Data revealed that in both reading conditions, the N100 and P300 ERP components were sensitive to internal processes such as recognition of words' grammatical functions. However, the results revealed that fast-paced reading rate might affect this process, as was reflected in the systematic changes of amplitudes and latencies of both ERP components. In accelerated reading, a significant decrease of latencies and increase of amplitudes in dyslexics were shown. It was also found that influence of fast-paced reading rate was realized in the full usage of the word-order strategy in sentence processing. In turn, this fact confirmed the hypothesis concerning a syntactic processing "weakness" in dyslexia.
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The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college... more
The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college students aged 18-27 years. The processing of normal word strings was examined during word-by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self-paced and fast-paced conditions. In both reading conditions, the N100 (late positive) and P300 (late negative) event-related potential (ERP) components were sensitive to such internal processes as recognition of words' syntactic functions. However, an accelerated reading rate influenced the way in which readers processed these sentence elements. In the self-paced condition, the predicate-centered (morphologically based) strategy was used, whereas in the fast-paced condition an approach that was more like the word-order strategy was used. This new pattern was correlated with findings on the shortening of latency and the increasing of amplitudes in both N100 and P300 ERP components for most sentence elements. These changes seemed to be related to improved working memory functioning and maximized attention.
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Language Acquisition, Semitic languages, Research Design, Semantics, and 17 moreRussian, Bilingual Education, Linguistics, Speech Communication, Comparative Study, Bilingualism, Semantic relations, Immigrants, Preschool Education, Correlation, Bilingualism and bilingual education, Second Language, Comparative Analysis, Questionnaires, Native Language, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Vocabulary development
ABSTRACT This paper presents a part of Multidimensional Examination of Mathematical Giftedness. This part is focuses on brain activity (using Event-Related Potentials methodology) associated with solving short choice-reaction... more
ABSTRACT This paper presents a part of Multidimensional Examination of Mathematical Giftedness. This part is focuses on brain activity (using Event-Related Potentials methodology) associated with solving short choice-reaction insight-based mathematical problems. We report on the findings related to 70 right hand male-students who were chosen for comparative data analysis. We examine problem-solving performance as revealed in behavioural and neuro-cognitive dimensions. We demonstrate differences revealed in problem-solving performance of gifted as compared to non-gifted participants as well as of excelling as compared to non-excelling participants. Based on the findings of this study we argue that excellence in mathematics is not necessarily related to general giftedness.
ABSTRACT In this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluation of giftedness in mathematics. We start with a literature review on the related topics presented so as to situate our suggestions within... more
ABSTRACT In this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluation of giftedness in mathematics. We start with a literature review on the related topics presented so as to situate our suggestions within the existing research on giftedness and excellence in mathematics. This literature review allows us later to discuss our findings, which are based on neurocognitive data collected in a large-scale multidimensional examination of mathematical giftedness. Sampling procedure in the study was performed based on two orthogonal (in our view) characteristics: gen-eral giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). In this paper we present findings that lead to a definition of the mathematically gifted population. We present selected results to provide evidence for our findings. In this paper we demonstrate three major findings: A. Effects of G and EM factors are task-dependent both in behavioral and neurophysiological measures: the EM factor has significant main effects on tasks that require implementation of knowledge familiar to students from school mathematics. By contrast, the G factor has a significant main effect on insight-based problems which are not part of the school mathematical curriculum and, thus, require original mathematical reasoning. B. Mathematical performance in gifted students who excel in mathematics (G-EM students) on insight-based tasks has specific characteristics in both behavioral and electrophysiological results. C. G-EM participants exhibited superior performance in all the tests, showing a constant neuro-efficiency effect. Based on these observations we suggest that mathematically gifted students are those who are both generally gifted and excel in mathematics.