Mengxia Li

It is well established in the literature that the relation of spatial ability and the number representation, but the intrinsic relation of spatial visualization ability and number representation are not well understood. In the Current study, Chinese Preschool children (N = 200; 107 girls; Mage = 5.47years, SD = 0.67) completed two kinds of spatial visualization tasks and six kinds of number representation tasks. The results showed that spatial visualization ability was positively correlated with number representation for 5 years-old Children. Furthermore, spatial visualization ability can positively predicted number representation. These findings are consistent with the view that spatial visualization is recognized for its potential to enhance numerical skills, encompassing competencies associated with fundamental number. Therefore, developing children’s spatial visualization ability may be an effective way to enhance their number representation skills. This has important implications for early education and intervention strategies.

Slovenská akadémia vied vykonáva špičkový základný výskum, dlhodobý strategický a aplikovaný výskum a vývoj a poskytuje prístup k vedeckej infraštruktúre.

This study investigated the changes in college students' mental health literacy before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We administered online surveys to 2,249 college students in 2019 and 3,007 college students in 2022, and the results showed that the pandemic heightened mental health literacy over this time. There were higher proportions of college students with high and moderate mental health literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic, while there were fewer college students with low mental health literacy. The positive change in mental health literacy varied among different types of college students on the basis of individual factors such as age, gender, school roles, and family residential region. These findings emphasize the importance of tailored interventions and holistic approaches to mental health promotion in educational settings.

This study investigates the number line estimation (NLE) strategies utilized by children aged 4–7 across both bounded and unbounded NLE tasks. Drawing on prior research, it hypothesized that younger children would predominantly employ benchmark-based strategies, with endpoints as reference points, in bounded tasks, while older children would utilize a wider range of reference points including midpoints and quartiles. For unbounded tasks, it was anticipated that both younger and older children would adopt the scalloped strategy. A total of 181 Chinese children participated, representing three educational backgrounds: Middle Class (kindergarten), Senior Class (kindergarten), and Grade 1 (elementary school). They completed the bounded and unbounded NLE tasks with numbers ranging from 0 to 50. Data analysis focused on estimation accuracy using Percent Absolute Error (PAE) and contour analyses to examine strategy use. Results revealed that all age groups employed benchmark-based strategies using endpoints and midpoints in both bounded and unbounded tasks, and applied the scalloped strategy with units of integers 5 or 10 across all tasks. Findings suggest a coexistence of benchmark-based and scalloped strategies across task types, reflecting children’s intuitive estimation strategies. Furthermore, children aged 4 to 7 exhibited consistent strategy utilization, indicating a developmental stage characterized by reliance on specific reference points for estimation. This study contributes to understanding the developmental trajectory of number line estimation strategies in early childhood and emphasizes the importance of task type, learning experiences, and other factors in eliciting different estimation strategies.

To examine the level of number line estimation (NLE) in Chinese children with respect to representations of both numerical (Arabic numerals) and non-numerical symbols (dots), a total of 192 Chinese preschoolers aged between 4 and 5 years participated in four different NLE tasks. These tasks were paired to evaluate the accuracy and patterns of children’s estimations in both numerical and non-numerical symbol contexts. Our findings indicate that, for Chinese preschoolers, relatively precise numerical symbol representations begin to emerge as early as 4 years of age. The accuracy of number line estimates for both 4- and 5-year-old children gradually increases in tasks involving both numerical and non-numerical symbols. Additionally, the development and patterns observed in the number line estimates of 4- and 5-year-old Chinese preschoolers are similar in both numerical symbol and non-numerical symbol tasks. These results indicate that the initiation of relatively precise numerical symbol representation and the turning point in the developmental trajectory, where the relatively precise representation for numerical symbols surpasses that of non-numerical ones, occur earlier in Chinese children than in their Western counterparts.

The quality of people’s lives is closely related to their emotional state. Positive emotions can boost confidence and help overcome difficulties, while negative emotions can harm both physical and mental health. Research has shown that people’s handwriting is associated with their emotions. In this study, audio‐visual media were used to induce emotions, and a dot‐matrix digital pen was used to collect neutral text data written by participants in three emotional states: calm, happy, and sad. To address the challenge of limited samples, a novel conditional table generative adversarial network called conditional tabular‐generative adversarial network (CTAB‐GAN) was used to increase the number of task samples, and the recognition accuracy of task samples improved by 4.18%. The TabNet (a neural network designed for tabular data) with SimAM (a simple, parameter‐free attention module) was employed and compared with the original TabNet and traditional machine learning models; the incorporation of the SimAm attention mechanism led to a 1.35% improvement in classification accuracy. Experimental results revealed significant differences between negative (sad) and nonnegative (calm and happy) emotions, with a recognition accuracy of 80.67%. Overall, this study demonstrated the feasibility of emotion recognition based on handwriting with the assistance of CTAB‐GAN and SimAm‐TabNet. It provides guidance for further research on emotion recognition or other handwriting‐based applications.