from the nothing-wrong-with-using-your-fingers-to-count dept.
Research into diagnostic markers of math competence in preschoolers looked at the ability to enumerate a number of dots (between 1 and 5). Dot enumeration is a marker of school-aged children's math competence, however this had not been looked at previously for preschool children.
The current study is the first study to show that preschoolers' dot enumeration abilities (in particular, dot enumeration efficiency) is a marker of emerging arithmetic competence, over and above the influence of working memory and response inhibition.
Further, compared to school children, preschoolers' dot enumeration abilities are just emerging and are characterised by greater variability in their responses. School-aged children likely process the dot enumeration task efficiently as their enumeration skills are more highly practiced; however, it is likely a novel task for preschoolers, and they may switch between counting and subitizing strategies to enumerate small sets.
In summary, the findings of the present study suggest that dot enumeration abilities, like magnitude comparison abilities, are markers of preschoolers' emerging math competence and likely have diagnostic value.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday April 11 2014, @04:16AM
Is the article for the new "discovery" math, where each student discovers for themselves how to do math, or against it?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @05:53AM
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday April 11 2014, @05:54AM
Totally.. Nothing scarier than a terrorist who doesn't know basic math.
(Score: 3, Informative) by zsau on Friday April 11 2014, @06:46AM
I don't know what discovery maths is.
This article is about subitisation, which is when you just automatically know how many things there are. You don't count them, you just see, oh yes, there's three coins there. But when there's eight, you say, four, five, six, seven, eight (or maybe draw a line in the middle of the group and say "there's four on each side of the line so there's eight", but I can't do that with nine things because five is too many for me).
In 42-57 month olds, this apparently predicts arithmetic ability.
The article itself has nothing to do with any particular teaching pattern. Perhaps you could use it to decide how to teach particular individuals.
(Only read a bit of the article so far, I'm supposed to be busy at work.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday April 11 2014, @06:46AM
This reminds me of a simplified version of Panamath [panamath.org]. I took it a year or two ago. It's an interesting little test. The basic idea with Panamath is that at least part of your success with math depends on a fundamental visual sense of quantity. Speed and accuracy are also important. At least that's my 10,000 ft. takeaway. Thus, your results on the test are actually normalized for age, because reaction time figures into the test.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @06:47AM
The way it's reported, I want government research budget chopped down at least by half.
Seriously, what the fuck are these bullshit? These researchers are not good enough flip hamburgers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jasassin on Friday April 11 2014, @08:12AM
It has been claimed that the abilities to efficiently enumerate small sets of items and to compare magnitudes are indexes of core numerical competences that scaffold the acquisition of math abilities [1]–[3].
Is it just me, or does that make you want to donkey punch the person who wrote it?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Friday April 11 2014, @05:38PM
I'm being a little facetious here, but that's what I'm getting from this study. Specifically, the speed (efficiency) of the counting. In fact, a lot of the fancy terms in the abstract/description appear customized specifically to obscure this fact (counting = "dot enumeration", speed = "efficiency", math ability = "emerging arithmetic competence", etc.).
And this has even been done in other age groups? So the only new benefit to science is that people hadn't managed to get preschoolers to sit still for long enough to count to five several times in a reasonably controlled setting?
This is barely a high school science fair project gussied up with bigger vocab.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday April 11 2014, @07:48PM
Well, I gather it includes more complex arithmetic like multiplication and division. But I wouldn't call it "math". There's a lot more to math than what people get subject to in high school.