Math is Fun! Do you agree?
Mathematics is often used as a benchmark to measure the intelligence of children. But most students find maths very challenging. Is your child struggling with math too? Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have suggested some cognitive exercises that can help improve your child's mathematics skills. In a new study, the experts found that young children who practice visual working memory and reasoning tasks were able to improve their math skills better than children who focus on spatial rotation exercises. Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, their findings provide evidence that when it comes to enhancing mathematical learning in young children, the type of cognitive training matters.
Spatial ability, which refers to the capacity to understand and remember dimensional relations among objects, is linked to enhanced performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This is the reason why spatial ability tests are being used while evaluating the candidates' skills during the hiring process of some jobs. This has led to many schools including spatial cognition training, which focuses on improving one's ability to memorize and manipulate various shapes and objects and spot patterns in recurring sequences, as part of their tutoring.
Torkel Klingberg, professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet and his team wanted to determine if and to what extent spatial cognition training actually improves performance. For the study, more than 17,000 Swedish schoolchildren aged between six to eight years were given cognitive training via an app for 20 to 33 minutes per day over the course of seven weeks.
They observed the largest positive impact on mathematical performance in reasoning training, followed by memory training. Both reasoning and memory training also significantly outperformed rotation training when it came to the children's math performance.
"While it is likely that for any given test, training on that particular skill is the most time-effective way to improve test results, our study offers a proof of principle that spatial cognitive training transfers to academic abilities," said Torkel Klingberg, as quoted by ScienceDaily.
In a visual working memory task, you can ask you kid to recollect visual objects. For example, in this study, the young participants reproduced a sequence of dots on a grid by touching the screen. More items were added to make the task more difficult.
In a non-verbal reasoning task, you can ask you kid to complete sequences of spatial patterns. For example, in this study, the children were asked to choose the correct image to fill a blank space based on previous sequences. They found it harder to complete the task when new dimensions such as colors, shapes and dots were added.
A rotation task is all about figuring out what an object would look like if rotated. Karolinska Institutet asked the children to rotate a 2D object to fit various angles. To make the task more difficult, they increased the angle of the rotation or the complexity of the object being rotated.
