Finger use is related to arithmetic performance in children, but the strength of this relation decreases significantly over development¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? In a cohort study following TD kindergartners to second grade, finger use correlated with arithmetic performance with small to large correlations that decreased significantly over time. → Maëlle Neveu 2023

Evidence¶

Maëlle Neveu 2023¶

Maëlle Neveu, Marie Geurten, Nancy Durieux, Laurence Rousselle. (2023). Finger Use and Arithmetic Skills in Children and Adolescents: a Scoping Review. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09722-8

q3 · i? · review · r3

Cohort study following TD kindergartners until second grade; the review reports "small to large correlations between finger use and arithmetic performance, which decreased significantly over time." No single standardized effect size value is printed for the decline.

"In the cohort study, Jordan et al. (2008) followed TD kindergartners until the second grade and found small to large correlations between finger use and arithmetic performance, which decreased significantly over time."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Children with mathematical learning disabilities use finger counting more often and switch to memory-based strategies later than typically developing peers — related
• Training children to explicitly use finger strategies improves calculation performance in most studies, though results are not uniform — related
• Suppressing or restricting hand movements disrupts children's arithmetic performance, suggesting gestures play a functional role in calculation — related
• The advantage of a large working-memory span on children's arithmetic strategy use decreases across grades: span predicts retrieval frequency in second grade only and retrieval efficiency in second and fourth grade only — related