Abstract
Evidence has revealed an association between finger gnosis and arithmetic skills in young Western children, however, it is unknown whether such an association can be generalized to Chinese children and what mechanism may underlie this relationship. This study examines whether finger gnosis is associated with addition skills in young Chinese children and, if so, what numerical skills could explain this correlation. A total of 102 Chinese children aged 5–6 years were asked to complete finger gnosis and addition tasks in Study 1. Results showed that finger gnosis was significantly associated with addition performance. However, no significant correlation was found between finger gnosis and the use of finger counting in solving addition problems. Moreover, girls’ finger gnosis was better than boys’, and children with musical training demonstrated better finger gnosis than those without. In Study 2, 16 children with high finger gnosis and 20 children with low finger gnosis were selected from the children in Study 1 and asked to perform enumeration, order judgment, number sense, and number line estimation. Children with high finger gnosis performed better in number line estimation than their counterparts with low finger gnosis. Moreover, the number line estimation fully mediated the relationship between finger gnosis and addition performance. Together, these studies provide evidence of a correlation between finger gnosis and addition skills. They also highlight the importance of number line estimation in bridging this association.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: 21 March 2020 Accepted: 03 September 2020 Published: 30 September 2020Citation: Zhang L, Wang W and Zhang X (2020) Effect of Finger Gnosis on Young Chinese Children’s Addition Skills
We explore whether the association between finger gnosis and addition skills is mediated by number processing abilities, including enumeration, number ordering, number sense, and number line estimation
To address the discussed objectives, we examined whether finger gnosis was associated with young Chinese children’s addition skills and the use of a finger-counting strategy in solving addition problems in Study 1
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: 21 March 2020 Accepted: 03 September 2020 Published: 30 September 2020. A large body of research has found that fingers (e.g., finger gnosis, finger tapping, and finger counting) play an important role in arithmetic processing (e.g., Noël, 2005; Gracia-Bafalluy and Noël, 2008; Costa et al, 2011; Lafay et al, 2013; Crollen and Noël, 2015b; Soylu and Newman, 2016). Emerging evidence has suggested an association between finger gnosis and arithmetic skills in young Western children, it is not clear whether such an association can be generalized to Chinese children and what mechanisms may underlie this relationship. We examine the correlation between finger gnosis and addition skills in young Chinese children and the mechanism underlying this relationship
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