Mental simulation and its influence on finger-based numerical representations.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence indicating beneficial effects of mental simulation on athletic and musical performance. We evaluated whether such beneficial effects of mental simulation generalize to the cognitive domain in terms of embodied (finger-based) numerical representations. METHODS: We assessed 70 preschoolers (36 girls, mean age 5;9) on tasks assessing different basic numerical skills (e.g., counting, cardinality understanding, number composition, etc.) as well as different aspects of finger-based numerical representations. A subgroub completed a mental simulation phase prior to testing finger-based representations. RESULTS: Children who completed the mental simulation phase, performed better on the tasks assessing finger-based representations compared to, children who did not complete the simulation phase. This held even when controlling for performance in basic numerical skills. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence that beneficial effects of mental simulation generalize to embodied (finger-based) numerical representations. Mental simulation may be useful to integrate in the instruction of basic numerical skills.

Mastery of structured quantities like finger or dice patterns predict arithmetic performance.

In the present study, we investigated whether structured quantities like finger or dice patterns are enumerated better than unstructured quantities because they may not require counting. Moreover, we hypothesized children's mastery of structured quantities to predict their later arithmetic performance longitudinally. In particular, we expected that children more proficient in enumerating structured quantities early in their numerical development, should develop more effective calculation strategies later because they may rely on counting less. Therefore, we conducted a longitudinal study (including 116 children, 58 girls) over the course of about 7 months from preschool (at about 6 years of age) to the middle of first grade. Results showed that structured quantities were indeed enumerated more accurately and faster than unstructured quantities in preschool. Additionally, we observed significant associations of enumeration of structured and unstructured with children's addition performance in first grade. However, regression analysis indicated only enumeration of structured but not unstructured quantities to significantly predict later addition performance. In sum, this longitudinal study clearly indicates that mastery of structured quantities seems to be beneficial for children's development of basic arithmetic abilities.