Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology and Medical Sciences, UMIT Private University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, 6060 Hall in Tyrol, Austria.
Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany; Centre for Mathematical Cognition, School of Science, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom; LEAD Graduate School and Research Network, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen Germany; Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany.
Trends Neurosci Educ. 2021 Dec;25:100167. doi: 10.1016/j.tine.2021.100167. Epub 2021 Nov 14.
There is evidence indicating beneficial effects of mental simulation on athletic and musical performance. We evaluated whether such beneficial effects of mental simulation generalize to the cognitive domain in terms of embodied (finger-based) numerical representations.
We assessed 70 preschoolers (36 girls, mean age 5;9) on tasks assessing different basic numerical skills (e.g., counting, cardinality understanding, number composition, etc.) as well as different aspects of finger-based numerical representations. A subgroub completed a mental simulation phase prior to testing finger-based representations.
Children who completed the mental simulation phase, performed better on the tasks assessing finger-based representations compared to, children who did not complete the simulation phase. This held even when controlling for performance in basic numerical skills.
This study provides evidence that beneficial effects of mental simulation generalize to embodied (finger-based) numerical representations. Mental simulation may be useful to integrate in the instruction of basic numerical skills.
有证据表明，心理模拟对运动和音乐表现有有益的影响。我们评估了心理模拟是否会在认知领域产生有益的影响，具体表现为基于身体的（基于手指的）数字表示。
我们评估了 70 名学龄前儿童（36 名女孩，平均年龄 5 岁 9 个月）在不同的基本数字技能（例如，计数、基数理解、数字组成等）以及不同的基于手指的数字表示方面的任务。一个小组在测试基于手指的表示之前完成了心理模拟阶段。
与未完成模拟阶段的儿童相比，完成心理模拟阶段的儿童在基于手指的表示任务上的表现更好。即使在控制基本数字技能表现的情况下，这一结果仍然成立。
这项研究提供了证据，表明心理模拟的有益效果可以推广到基于身体的（基于手指的）数字表示。心理模拟可能对基本数字技能的教学很有用。
