Work

Recruiting spatial-numerical representations to increase arithmetic fluency in low-income students.

Year: 2025

Type: article

Study designs: Randomized Controlled Trial, Clinical Trial

Abstract: = 205) were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: spatial-continuous, spatial-discrete, nonspatial-verbal cues, and nonspatial-no verbal cues. All conditions involved eight 30-min training sessions, in which children received instruction on addition/subtraction problems with totals within 10. The key difference between conditions was the type of materials utilized during training-specifically, the type of magnitude cues they contained. The results showed that children's arithmetic skills increased from pre- to posttest in all conditions and that the increase was significantly larger in the spatial, compared to nonspatial, conditions. However, there was no effect of condition on numerical magnitude knowledge, which leaves open the question about the underlying mechanism. The findings demonstrating a causal relation between spatial and mathematical domains have both theoretical significance and practical implications for the choice of instructional materials. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Source: Developmental Psychology

DOI: 10.1037/dev0001921