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A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels
Abacus mental arithmetic involves the skilled acquisition of a set of gestures representing mathematical algorithms to properly manipulate an imaginary abacus. The present study examined how the beneficial effect of abacus co-thought gestures varied at different skill and problem difficulty levels....
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2018
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6090447/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30131733 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01267 |
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author | Cho, Philip S. So, Wing Chee |
author_facet | Cho, Philip S. So, Wing Chee |
author_sort | Cho, Philip S. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Abacus mental arithmetic involves the skilled acquisition of a set of gestures representing mathematical algorithms to properly manipulate an imaginary abacus. The present study examined how the beneficial effect of abacus co-thought gestures varied at different skill and problem difficulty levels. We compared the mental arithmetic performance of 6- to 8-year-old beginning (N = 57), intermediate (N = 65), and advanced (N = 54) learners under three conditions: a physical abacus, hands-free (spontaneous gesture) mental arithmetic, and hands-restricted mental arithmetic. We adopted a mixed-subject design, with level of difficulty and skill level as the within-subject independent variables and condition as the between-subject independent variable. Our results showed a clear contrast in calculation performance and gesture accuracy among learners at different skill levels. Learners first mastered how to calculate using a physical abacus and later benefitted from using abacus gestures to aid mental arithmetic. Hand movement and gesture accuracy indicated that the beneficial effect of gestures may be related to motor learning. Beginners were proficient with a physical abacus, but performed poorly and had low gesture accuracy during mental arithmetic. Intermediates relied on gestures to do mental arithmetic and had accurate hand movements, but performed more poorly when restricted from gesturing. Advanced learners could perform mental arithmetic with accurate gestures and scored just as well without gesturing. These findings suggest that for intermediate and advanced learners, motor-spatial representation through abacus co-thought gestures may complement visual-spatial representation of a mental abacus to reduce working memory load. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6090447 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60904472018-08-21 A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels Cho, Philip S. So, Wing Chee Front Psychol Psychology Abacus mental arithmetic involves the skilled acquisition of a set of gestures representing mathematical algorithms to properly manipulate an imaginary abacus. The present study examined how the beneficial effect of abacus co-thought gestures varied at different skill and problem difficulty levels. We compared the mental arithmetic performance of 6- to 8-year-old beginning (N = 57), intermediate (N = 65), and advanced (N = 54) learners under three conditions: a physical abacus, hands-free (spontaneous gesture) mental arithmetic, and hands-restricted mental arithmetic. We adopted a mixed-subject design, with level of difficulty and skill level as the within-subject independent variables and condition as the between-subject independent variable. Our results showed a clear contrast in calculation performance and gesture accuracy among learners at different skill levels. Learners first mastered how to calculate using a physical abacus and later benefitted from using abacus gestures to aid mental arithmetic. Hand movement and gesture accuracy indicated that the beneficial effect of gestures may be related to motor learning. Beginners were proficient with a physical abacus, but performed poorly and had low gesture accuracy during mental arithmetic. Intermediates relied on gestures to do mental arithmetic and had accurate hand movements, but performed more poorly when restricted from gesturing. Advanced learners could perform mental arithmetic with accurate gestures and scored just as well without gesturing. These findings suggest that for intermediate and advanced learners, motor-spatial representation through abacus co-thought gestures may complement visual-spatial representation of a mental abacus to reduce working memory load. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-08-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6090447/ /pubmed/30131733 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01267 Text en Copyright © 2018 Cho and So. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Cho, Philip S. So, Wing Chee A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels |
title | A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels |
title_full | A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels |
title_fullStr | A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels |
title_full_unstemmed | A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels |
title_short | A Feel for Numbers: The Changing Role of Gesture in Manipulating the Mental Representation of an Abacus Among Children at Different Skill Levels |
title_sort | feel for numbers: the changing role of gesture in manipulating the mental representation of an abacus among children at different skill levels |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6090447/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30131733 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01267 |
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