TY - JOUR
T1 - Cognitive science in the field
T2 - A preschool intervention durably enhances intuitive but not formal mathematics
AU - Dillon, Moira R.
AU - Kannan, Harini
AU - Dean, Joshua T.
AU - Spelke, Elizabeth S.
AU - Duflo, Esther
N1 - Funding Information:
The data and analyses presented in this paper are available at doi:10.7910/DVN/LCLKDT. Supported by grants from the Union Bank of Switzerland and Optimus Foundation to J-PAL South Asia, the Harvard University Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative and Harvard University Foundations of Human Behavior Program (E.S.), NSF grant DGE-1144152 (M.D.), and NSF grant DGE-1122374 (J.D.). The project received institutional review board approval from MIT and the Institute for Financial Management and Research (Sri City, India) and is registered in the social science registry (www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/27/history/15141). We thank C. Cooper, K. Goffin, L. Schiller, and E. Schmidt for assistance in generating game materials; K. Dua, M. Duhon, A. Gupta, and A. Jha for assistance with intervention piloting, implementation, and evaluation; X. Gao and D. Mauer for providing images for the social games; N. Tottenham and C. Nelson for advice on the use of these images; J. Halberda for assistance in generating the images for the numerical games and assessments; Y. Huang for assistance in calibrating the math and social games; B. Reilly for assistance in the design and functioning of the math and social games; and K. Shutts for suggestions on elements of the social games. We thank P. Kakaji, M. Sharma, S. Sharma, Pratham, and the Pratham team of teachers for generously providing us with the opportunity to present these games to their preschool children in the warm and engaging environments that they have created for young learners in India and around the world. Finally, we thank R. Banerji, Pratham CEO, who was initially due to be an investigator, for many inspiring discussions throughout the course of this project.
PY - 2017/7/7
Y1 - 2017/7/7
N2 - Many poor children are underprepared for demanding primary school curricula. Research in cognitive science suggests that school achievement could be improved by preschool pedagogy in which numerate adults engage children's spontaneous, nonsymbolic mathematical concepts. To test this suggestion, we designed and evaluated a game-based preschool curriculum intended to exercise children's emerging skills in number and geometry. In a randomized field experiment with 1540 children (average age 4.9 years) in 214 Indian preschools, 4 months of math game play yielded marked and enduring improvement on the exercised intuitive abilities, relative to no-treatment and active control conditions. Math-trained children also showed immediate gains on symbolic mathematical skills but displayed no advantage in subsequent learning of the language and concepts of school mathematics.
AB - Many poor children are underprepared for demanding primary school curricula. Research in cognitive science suggests that school achievement could be improved by preschool pedagogy in which numerate adults engage children's spontaneous, nonsymbolic mathematical concepts. To test this suggestion, we designed and evaluated a game-based preschool curriculum intended to exercise children's emerging skills in number and geometry. In a randomized field experiment with 1540 children (average age 4.9 years) in 214 Indian preschools, 4 months of math game play yielded marked and enduring improvement on the exercised intuitive abilities, relative to no-treatment and active control conditions. Math-trained children also showed immediate gains on symbolic mathematical skills but displayed no advantage in subsequent learning of the language and concepts of school mathematics.
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U2 - 10.1126/science.aal4724
DO - 10.1126/science.aal4724
M3 - Article
C2 - 28684518
AN - SCOPUS:85024362280
SN - 0036-8075
VL - 357
SP - 47
EP - 55
JO - Science
JF - Science
IS - 6346
ER -