Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts

Link, Tanja; Moeller, Korbinian; Huber, Stefan; Fischer, Ursula; Nuerk, Hans‐Christoph

doi:10.1016/j.tine.2013.06.005

Cited by 129 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Children in the movement training conditions outperformed children in the non-movement training conditions during the training phase, and more importantly, on the final math test. These results are in line with previous studies using full-body movements, indicating that these movements can play a facilitating role during mathematical education (Fischer et al 2011;Link et al 2013). The study of Link et al (2013) already revealed the beneficial effects of literally walking the number line, as it allowed for an embodied experience of placing numbers on a continuous number line.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…These results are in line with previous studies using full-body movements, indicating that these movements can play a facilitating role during mathematical education (Fischer et al 2011;Link et al 2013). The study of Link et al (2013) already revealed the beneficial effects of literally walking the number line, as it allowed for an embodied experience of placing numbers on a continuous number line. In addition to this finding, this study showed that making different sized steps corresponding with the different number units on a discrete number line could also allow for an embodied experience of the architecture of decimal numbers with positive results on the final math test as a result.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Firstly, the conceptually congruent relation between the different sized steps and the different number units could have facilitated number-building learning, which resulted in higher performance on the final math test. This result would be in line with a recent study of Segal et al (2014) who found that actions that are conceptually congruent with thinking facilitated thinking, and the earlier-mentioned studies showing that moving the body task-specific ways strengthens a systematic association of numbers and space (e.g., Link et al 2013). Secondly, then, despite functional resemblance, the steps could simply have aided during the number building exercises across the ruler by functioning as a sort of keep-track-of-counting-device.…”

Section: Active Ingredients Of Full-body Movementssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Integrating full-body movements into these two-digit number building exercises means that children have to build two-digit numbers out of smaller units, with meaningful task-related full-body movements on a number line. The present study will extend the line of research done by Link et al (2013), which is the only math study that showed that full-body movements are related to enhanced number concept performance. However, the current study deviates from this study by introducing a number line with discrete step size indications (i.e., linear marks of ones, fives, and tens along the entire number line).…”

Section: Making Movementssupporting

confidence: 56%

“…Results revealed that the spatial-numerical training was more effective than the non-spatial control training in enhancing performance on a number line estimation task. Link et al (2013) also showed positive training effects after the embodied training in which children were trained to estimate the position of a given number by walking to the appropriate location of that number on a continuous number line on the floor without indications except for the two far ends (i.e., 0 and 100).…”

Section: Making Movementsmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Watch Your Step Children! Learning Two-Digit Numbers Through Mirror-Based Observation of Self-Initiated Body Movements

2015

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It was investigated whether task-related body movements yield beneficial effects on children's learning of two-digit numbers and whether these learning effects are affected by mirror-based self-observation of those movements. Participants were 118 first-graders, who were randomly assigned to two movement conditions and two nonmovement control conditions. In the movement conditions, children were instructed to build two-digit numbers by making and simultaneously verbalizing out loud different sized steps representing the smaller units the numbers consisted of (e.g., the number B36^was construed by saying out loud B10,^B20,^B30,^B35,^B36,^while making three big steps, one medium, and one small step) on a ruler across the floor. In one of the movement conditions, the children were additionally asked to observe their steps in a mirror. In the first conventionally taught control condition, the children were asked to verbally build and mark the two-digit numbers on a ruler depicted on a sheet of paper. In the second control condition, children were seated before the ruler across the floor, and after verbally constructing the two-digit number, they had to walk to the appropriate position of the number on the ruler across the floor. In the subsequent test phase, children's knowledge of two-digit numbers was assessed by a final math test. The results confirmed the hypothesis that the movement conditions lead to higher test performance than the non-movement condition and revealed that test performance was not differentially affected by mirror-based self-observation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%