Mathematics is one of those subjects that are especially difficult for schoolchildren. However, children can be helped. How? Swedish scientists figured it out.
For a better understanding of mathematics, children need to develop spatial memory and thinking. This conclusion was reached by the staff of the Department of Neurobiology of the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), whose article was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
The results of scientific work have shown that developed spatial thinking, that is, the ability to navigate in space, understand and remember the location of objects relative to each other, goes hand in hand with good mathematical abilities.
To confirm the existence of this connection, Torkel Klinberg, professor of cognitive neuroscience of development, and his colleague Nicholas Judd conducted a large-scale study involving more than 17,5 thousand Swedish schoolchildren aged six to eight years. For seven weeks, for 20-30 minutes a day, the children trained their spatial thinking using a special application.
In the first five days, all students performed the same tasks. The app then randomly divided the participants into groups with different workout plans. At the same time, half the time all the children performed the same type of tasks – they had to determine the correct position of the number in the number series. And the rest of the time was devoted to specialized exercises.
So, in one of the groups, the emphasis was on developing the ability to manipulate in the mind the position of objects in space (for example, mentally rotate two-dimensional objects at different angles), in the other – on the development of visual-spatial working memory (the ability to memorize information about the position of objects in space) , in the third – on the improvement of spatial logical thinking. In all groups, the complexity of tasks gradually increased.
At the end of the first, fifth, and seventh weeks of school, students were tested in mathematics, and all groups showed a marked improvement in test scores.
At the same time, training for the development of visual-spatial working memory and logical thinking turned out to be the most effective. In turn, the skill of mentally manipulating the position of objects in space was recognized as not so effective.
Although about 70% of the time the children completed the same tasks, the remaining 30% of the time, when the types of tasks were slightly different, was enough for the difference in the results of mathematical tests between groups to reach 11,5%. What’s more, some children even began to solve some types of mathematical problems two to three times better than others, Klinberg and Judd noted.
As Klinberg explained in a commentary for PsyPost, this study proves that the brain can be trained: regular performance of visual-spatial memory and thinking tasks could clearly improve the mathematical abilities of the most ordinary children.