Abstract
Mental Abacus (MA) is a popular arithmetic technique in which students learn to solve math problems by visualizing a physical abacus structure. Prior studies conducted in Asia have found that MA can lead to exceptional mathematics achievement in highly motivated individuals, and that extensive training over multiple years can also benefit students in standard classroom settings. Here we explored the benefits of shorter-term MA training to typical students in a US school. Specifically, we tested whether MA (1) improves arithmetic performance relative to a standard math curriculum, and (2) leads to changes in spatial working memory, as claimed by several recent reports. To address these questions, we conducted a one-year, classroom-randomized trial of MA instruction. We found that first-graders students struggled to achieve abacus expertise over the course of the year, while second-graders were more successful. Neither age group showed a significant advantage in cognitive abilities or mathematical computation relative to controls, although older children showed some hints of an advantage in learning place-value concepts. Overall, our results suggest caution in the adoption of MA as a short-term educational intervention.
Highlights
Mental Abacus (MA) is a popular arithmetic technique in which students learn to solve math problems by visualizing a physical abacus structure
These facts suggest that MA builds on the visuospatial capacities of learners by transforming a serial linguistic process into a potentially less constrained visual workspace, and thereby linking abstract symbolic mathematics to concrete representations of objects and sets – a strategy often used in math education outside of MA, in the form of simple manipulative systems (Ball, 1992; Hatano, Amaiwa, & Shimizu, 1987; Uttal, Scudder, & DeLoache, 1997)
– consistent with the hypothesis that MA might be most beneficial to children with high visuo-spatial working memory – we found that improvement was mediated by children’s individual visual working memory capacities at the beginning of the study
Summary
Mental Abacus (MA) is a popular arithmetic technique in which students learn to solve math problems by visualizing a physical abacus structure. Users of MA appear to be limited to representing 3 or 4 abacus columns at a time, suggesting that each abacus column is represented as a distinct “object” in visuospatial working memory (Frank & Barner, 2012; Stigler, 1984) These facts suggest that MA builds on the visuospatial capacities of learners by transforming a serial linguistic process into a potentially less constrained visual workspace, and thereby linking abstract symbolic mathematics to concrete representations of objects and sets – a strategy often used in math education outside of MA, in the form of simple manipulative systems (Ball, 1992; Hatano, Amaiwa, & Shimizu, 1987; Uttal, Scudder, & DeLoache, 1997)
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