Edward Michael Hubbard, PhD

Position title: Associate Professor, Educational Psychology

PhD, University of California, San Deigo

Contact Information

Waisman Center
1500 Highland Avenue
Room 281
Madison, WI 53705
608.890.2625
emhubbard@wisc.edu
Lab Website: Educational Neuroscience Lab

Research Statement

The Educational Neuroscience Lab explores questions at the intersection of education and neuroscience, in the emerging field of Educational Neuroscience. Our research examines the neural underpinnings of cognitive processes that are relevant for education, and the role of educational experiences and enculturation as primary drivers of brain plasticity to create the neural circuits that underlie human specific abilities. Our research combines the latest technological advances in understanding the human brain as a “learning organ” with insights from cognitive psychology and education to help build the emerging field of educational neuroscience.

The lab focuses on three main areas:
1) the acquisition of mathematics in typical and atypically developing populations
2) the role of multi-sensory integration in learning; and
3) the role of learning in synesthesia, and the consequences of synesthesia for education.

My initial training was in the methods and theories of cognitive science and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley (BA) and the University of California, San Diego (MA and PhD). I then held a post-doctoral appointment at INSERM in France where I used methods of cognitive neuroscience (including functional MRI and EEG) to explore the neural basis of numerical and mathematical abilities, especially the mental number line, in typically developing adults. Inspired by the idea that the neural circuits we observed in adults were the result of a lifetime of educational experiences I took a second post-doc at Vanderbilt University, where I examined how the earliest stages of formal mathematics education shape brain circuits as children begin to link Arabic number symbols with their underlying quantity semantics during the early school years (K-3rd grade).

Selected Publications

Starling-Alves, I., Wronski, M. R., & Hubbard, E. M. (2022). Math anxiety differentially impairs symbolic, but not nonsymbolic, fraction skills across development. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1509(1), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14715
Kalra, P. B., Hubbard, E. M., & Matthews, P. G. (2020). Taking the Relational Structure of Fractions Seriously: Relational Reasoning Predicts Fraction Knowledge in Elementary School Children. Contemporary educational psychology, 62, 101896. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101896
Kalra, P. B., Binzak, J. V., Matthews, P. G., & Hubbard, E. M. (2020). Symbolic fractions elicit an analog magnitude representation in school-age children. Journal of experimental child psychology, 195, 104844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104844
Binzak, J. V., & Hubbard, E. M. (2020). No calculation necessary: Accessing magnitude through decimals and fractions. Cognition, 199, 104219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104219
Toomarian, E. Y., Gosavi, R. S., & Hubbard, E. M. (2019). Implicit and explicit spatial-numerical representations diverge in number-form synesthetes. Consciousness and cognition, 75, 102806. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.102806
Gosavi, R. S., & Hubbard, E. M. (2019). A colorful advantage in iconic memory. Cognition, 187, 32–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.02.009
Toomarian, E. Y., Meng, R., & Hubbard, E. M. (2019). Individual Differences in Implicit and Explicit Spatial Processing of Fractions. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 596. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00596
Cochrane, A., Cui, L., Hubbard, E. M., & Green, C. S. (2019). “Approximate number system” training: A perceptual learning approach. Attention, perception & psychophysics, 81(3), 621–636. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-018-01636-w
Toomarian, E. Y., & Hubbard, E. M. (2018). The fractions SNARC revisited: Processing fractions on a consistent mental number line. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 71(8), 1761–1770. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2017.1350867
Toomarian EY, Hubbard EM. (2018). On the genesis of spatial-numerical associations: Evolutionary and cultural factors co-construct the mental number line. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 21;90:184-199.
Matthews PG, Hubbard EM. (2017). Making Space for Spatial Proportions. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50(6):644-647.
Toomarian EY, Hubbard EM. (2017). The Fractions SNARC Revisited: Processing Fractions on a Consistent Mental Number Line. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Hove), 12:1-37.
Sidney PG, Thompson CA, Matthews PG, Hubbard EM. (2017). From continuous magnitudes to symbolic numbers: The centrality of ratio. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40:e190.
Matthews PG, Lewis MR, Hubbard EM. (2016). Individual Differences in Nonsymbolic Ratio Processing Predict Symbolic Math Performance. Psychological Science, 27(2):191-202.
Viarouge A, Hubbard EM, McCandliss BD. (2014) The cognitive mechanisms of the SNARC effect: an individual differences approach. PLoS One. 23;9(4):e95756.
Oberman LM, Hubbard EM, McCleery JP. (2014) Associative learning alone is insufficient for the evolution and maintenance of the human mirror neuron system. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 37(2):212-3.
Oberman LM, McCleery JP, Hubbard EM, Bernier R, Wiersema JR, Raymaekers R, Pineda JA. (2013) Developmental changes in mu suppression to observed and executed actions in autism spectrum disorders. Social Cognitive Affective Neurosciences. Mar;8(3):300-4.
Hubbard EM, Brang D, Ramachandran VS. (2011) The cross-activation theory at 10. Journal of Neuropsychology. Sep;5(2):152-77.
Ranzini M, Dehaene S, Piazza M, Hubbard EM. (2009) Neural mechanisms of attentional shifts due to irrelevant spatial and numerical cues. Neuropsychologia. Oct;47(12):2615-24.
Knops A, Thirion B, Hubbard EM, Michel V, Dehaene S. (2009) Recruitment of an area involved in eye movements during mental arithmetic. Science. 19;324(5934):1583-5.
Hubbard EM, Diester I, Cantlon JF, Ansari D, Opstal Fv, Troiani V. (2008) The evolution of numerical cognition: from number neurons to linguistic quantifiers. Journal of Neuroscience. Nov 12;28(46):11819-24.
Hubbard EM, Piazza M, Pinel P, Dehaene S. (2005) Interactions between number and space in parietal cortex. Nature Reviews. Neurosciences. Jun;6(6):435-48.
Oberman LM, Hubbard EM, McCleery JP, Altschuler EL, Ramachandran VS, Pineda JA. (2005) EEG evidence for mirror neuron dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders. Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research. Jul;24(2):190-8.