Adding up fine motor skills: Developmental relations between manual dexterity and numerical abilities

Abstract

The strength and development of the relationship between mathematical and motor skills is explored across three age groups of normally developing children. The presence of this relationship is postulated in classical accounts of human development. In contemporary research, the existence of a relationship between motor development and the development of abstract concepts may inform theories of embodied cognition. Existing work supports a link between fine motor skills and various numerical and mathematical tasks in young children; however, few attempts have been made to investigate this relationship across different ages. We use a cross-sectional design to investigate the link between fine motor and mathematical skills in samples of 81–96 Kindergarten, 2nd-grade, and 4th-grade children. Bayesian correlations were performed to explore the relationship between fine motor skills and mathematical skills at different time points. The results show that correlational patterns vary across the three ages: in Kindergarten, manual dexterity of the dominant hand is related to math skills, in 2nd grade, the manual dexterity of the nondominant hand is related to math skills; and finally in 4th grade no such correlations are observable. These findings contribute to understanding the developmental trajectory of the relationship between motor skills and mathematical abilities and the internalization of numerical embodiment. Further investigation is needed to determine if fine motor skills can serve as an early indicator of mathematical skill development risk. Future work could also explore whether incorporating spatial and motor elements into mathematical tasks through whole-body or finger movement training supports the development of mathematical skills.