Sensorimotor ability and inhibitory control independently predict attainment in mathematics in children and adolescents

We previously linked interceptive timing performance to mathematics attainment in 5-11-year-old children, which we attributed to the neural overlap between spatiotemporal and numerical operations. This explanation implies the relationship should persist through the teenage years, so we extended our investigation to adolescents (n = 200, 11-15 years) and replicated the original finding. However, an alternative explanation is that sensorimotor proficiency and academic attainment are both consequences of executive function ability. To assess this competing hypothesis, we developed a measure of a core executive function, inhibitory control, from the kinematic data. We combined adolescent data with the original children's data (total n = 568), performing a novel analysis controlling for our marker of executive function. We found the relationship between mathematics and interceptive timing persisted at all ages. These results suggest a distinct functional link between interceptive timing and mathematics that operates independently of our measure of executive function.