MATHEMATICAL COGNITIVE-STYLE AND ARITHMETIC SIGN COMPREHENSION - A STUDY OF EEG ALPHA-ACTIVITY AND THETA-ACTIVITY

The localization of arithmetic sign comprehension was investigated usi ng EEG spectral parameters as indicators of cortical engagement. Right -handed male subjects were selected on the basis of scores on the Math ematics Cognitive Style Survey and assigned to 2 groups, a 'left hemis phere oriented (LHO)' (N = 9) and 'right hemisphere oriented (RHO)' (N = 9) group. Subjects were presented with 4 conditions, a motoric base line condition, two arithmetic fact retrieval tasks employing either a sign operator or verbal operator and a sign comprehension task which required subjects to fill in a missing sign (e.g. 6 ? 4 = 24). Both ac ross subject correlational analysis of EEG alpha 1 asymmetry and perfo rmance as well as within subject analysis of condition means indicated a somewhat unique contribution of the right hemisphere to sign compre hension. LHO subjects exhibited greater relative left mid-temporal lob e activation than RHO subjects but less relative left frontal activati on (theta band) than RHO subjects during the verbal operator task. It was tentatively concluded that this frontal lobe asymmetry difference was due to a mismatch in strategy preference and coding requirements a mong RHO subjects.