Good number sense a good marker for good math skills

William Atkins
Monday, 08 September 2008 21:39

Science - Biology

Halberda (who is an assistant professor within the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences) stated in a September 7, 2008 Johns Hopkins news release that, "What this seems to mean is that the very basic number sense that we humans share with animals is related to the formal mathematics that we learn in school. The number sense we share with the animals and the formal math we learn in school may interact and inform each other throughout our lives." [Johns Hopkins University news release: “As easy as 1, 2, 3: Number sense correlates with test scores”]

He added, "We discovered that a child's ability to quickly estimate how many things are in a group significantly correlates with that child's performance in school math for every single year, reaching all the way back to when he or she was in kindergarten.”

The Johns Hopkins team found a good correlation between mathematical ability and achievement, and an inherited ability to estimate a quantity number within a group (“number sense”).

However, Halberda advises against the conclusion that the ability or inability to do math is “genertically determined and, therefore, immutable.”

Halberda comments, "There are many factors that might affect a person's performance in school mathematics. What is exciting in our result is that success in formal mathematics and simple math intuitions appear to be related."

The results of their research are scheduled to be published online in the journal Nature on September 7, 2008--although, as of September 8th at 11:30 a.m. CDT, its appearance was not present.

A video entitled “Spots Before Their Eyes” is provided on the Johns Hopkins website earlier referenced.