Although the role played by finger use in children's numerical development has been widely investigated, their benefit in arithmetical contexts is still debated today. This scoping review aimed to systematically identify and summarize all studies that have investigated the relation between fingers and arithmetic skills in children. An extensive…

Young children with limited knowledge of formal mathematics can intuitively perform basic arithmetic-like operations over nonsymbolic, approximate representations of quantity. However, the algorithmic rules that guide such nonsymbolic operations are not entirely clear. We asked whether nonsymbolic arithmetic operations have a function-like…

Our study on 328 five- to six-year-old kindergarteners (mainly White European living in France, 152 girls) shows that children who do not count on their fingers and undergo finger counting training exhibit drastic improvement in their addition skills from pre-test to post-test (i.e., accuracy from 37.3% to 77.1%) compared to a passive control…

Constantly on the lookout for Canadian mathematics education matters, because if Canadian mathematics education matters then Canadian mathematics education matters, three young university bookstore employees, university students, unable to make proper change when I handed them a five dollar bill for a sticker I was purchasing for my laptop,…

Background and objectives: An early understanding of numerosity is crucial to developing proficiency in arithmetic, and rapid pattern recognition via subitizing is key in this process. The training app "LORE" specifically targets and cultivates pattern recognition skills from the beginning of formal schooling. This study investigated…

A theoretical model describing Grade 7 students' rational number sense was formulated and validated empirically (n = 360), hypothesizing that rational number sense is a general construct consisting of three factors: basic rational number sense, arithmetic sense, and flexibility with rational numbers. Data analysis suggested that rational-number…

Students exhibiting mature number sense make sense of numbers and operations, use reasoning to notice patterns, and flexibly select the most effective and efficient problem-solving strategies (McIntosh et al., 1997; Reys et al., 1999; Yang, 2005). Despite being highlighted in national standards and policy documents (CCSS, 2010; NCTM, 2000, 2014),…

Numerous studies have shown a significant positive relationship between the mental representation of hands in young children and their calculation performance. The literature indicates that certain components of manual motor skills may be critical to the quality of this relationship. The main objective of this study is to measure the benefit of an…

Teachers and teacher educators have been sharing strategies and resources for implementing mathematics routines in National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) journals for years. A less commonly shared mathematics routine, especially with young learners, is "Clothesline Math" (Shore, 2017, 2018). In this routine, teachers create…

This study examined repeating and growing pattern knowledge and their associations with procedural and conceptual arithmetic knowledge in a sample of U.S. children (N = 185; M[subscript age] = 79.5 months; 55% female; 88% White) and adults (N = 93; M[subscript age] = 19.5 years; 62% female; 66% White) from 2019 to 2020. Three key findings emerged:…

Previous research has demonstrated a link between children's ability to name canonical finger configurations and their mathematical abilities. This study aimed to investigate the nature of this association, specifically exploring whether the relationship is skill and handshape specific and identifying the underlying mechanisms involved.…

This study investigates how the approximate number system (ANS) and young children's symbolic skills jointly develop and interact. Specifically, the study aims at disentangling the directionality of the association between ANS acuity and a wide range of symbolic skills that reflect 4- to 5-year-olds' symbolic quantitative knowledge (enumeration…

In this paper we report on findings from a study of 5-to-6-year-old children's ways of structuring part-part-whole relations using finger patterns. We focused our analysis on data from interviews with 28 children who during their last year of preschool learned to enact a structural approach. We used this data set to analyze their different ways of…

Computational estimation is seen as an important mathematical competence. Little is known, however, about the mathematical skills that are predictive of early computational estimation development. The current study longitudinally followed a group of about 350 children at four time points: second (K2, 4-year-olds) and third grades of kindergarten…

Individuals solve arithmetic problems in different ways and the strategies they choose are indicators of advanced competencies such as adaptivity and flexibility, and predict mathematical achievement. Understanding the factors that encourage or hinder the selection of different strategies is therefore important for helping individuals to succeed…