Investigating the respective contribution of sensory modalities and spatial disposition in numerical training
(2020) Journal of Experimental Child Psychology — Vol. 190, n° 1, p. 104729 (2020)
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- Authors
Honoré, Nastasya 
- Abstract
- Recent studies have suggested that multisensory redundancy may improve cognitive learning. According to this view, information simultaneously available across two or more modalities is highly salient and may therefore be learned and remembered better than the same information presented to only one modality. In the present paper, we wanted to evaluate whether training arithmetic with a multisensory intervention could induce larger learning improvements than a visual intervention alone. Moreover, as a left-to-right oriented mental number line was for a long time considered as a core feature of numerical representation, we also wanted to compare left-to-right and randomly-organized arithmetic training. Five training programs were therefore created and called: (1) multisensory linear; (2) multisensory random; (3) visual linear; (4) visual random; (5) control. Eighty-five preschoolers were randomly assigned to one of these five training conditions. While children were trained to solve simple addition and subtraction operations in the first 4 training conditions, stories understanding was the focus of the control training. Several numerical tasks (arithmetic, number-to-position, number comparison, counting, subitizing) were used as pre- and post-test measures. While the effect of spatial disposition was not significant, results demonstrated that the multisensory training condition led to a significantly larger performance’s improvement than did the visual training and the control conditions. This result was specific to the trained ability (arithmetic) and is discussed in light of the multisensory redundancy hypothesis.
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Citations
Crollen, V., Noël, M.-P., Honoré, N., Degroote, V., & Collignon, O. (2020). Investigating the respective contribution of sensory modalities and spatial disposition in numerical training. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 190(1), 104729. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104729 (Original work published 2020)