Liczenie na palcach w ontogenezie i jego znaczenie dla rozwoju kompetencji matematycznych
Finger counting and its role in the development of math competence

Summary/Abstract: Finger counting plays an important role in mathematical cognition, especially in the acquisition of the concept of number and elementary math competence. Fingers are spontaneously used to count because of their constant availability and easiness of manipulation. Stable counting order within hand facilitates the acquisition of ordinal as well as cardinal numbers. Additionally, using fingers to count alleviates working memory load and allows constant control of counting accuracy. Apart from the usefulness for counting practice, cognitive representations of fingers are strongly interconnected with representations of numbers. Finger gnosis (the quality of the brain representations of fingers) is a good predictor of current as well as future math achievement. There is also evidence that the training of finger differentiation leads to improvements in math achievement.

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