Visual representation
The language and motor tasks somewhat hindered the expert children’s mental calculations, with the language task interfering slightly less than the motor task. In contrast, a group of undergraduates from the University of California with no experience in mental abacus found it almost impossible to perform complex calculations while listening to the story.
All of this suggests that for practiced experts, mental abacus does not depend strongly on language systems, says Frank. Most of us need words to represent a number like 134,789 – we rely on concepts represented by verbal numbers like “seven-hundred and eighty-nine” – but mental abacus may be largely a visual task for those who master it.
“What we found confirms and extends previous work suggesting that mental abacus is not based on language, but is really a mental image of some sort, a visual representation,” Frank adds.
The design of the abacus not only makes it a powerful physical tool, it also facilitates mental visualisation. Grouping beads into a few sets makes them easier to hold in visual memory – just as dividing long telephone numbers into three or four-digit chunks helps us remember them. “Because the physical abacus groups beads into columns, it’s easier to hold a mental image of the abacus in your head,” says Frank.
Visual representationThe language and motor tasks somewhat hindered the expert children’s mental calculations, with the language task interfering slightly less than the motor task. In contrast, a group of undergraduates from the University of California with no experience in mental abacus found it almost impossible to perform complex calculations while listening to the story.All of this suggests that for practiced experts, mental abacus does not depend strongly on language systems, says Frank. Most of us need words to represent a number like 134,789 – we rely on concepts represented by verbal numbers like “seven-hundred and eighty-nine” – but mental abacus may be largely a visual task for those who master it.“What we found confirms and extends previous work suggesting that mental abacus is not based on language, but is really a mental image of some sort, a visual representation,” Frank adds.The design of the abacus not only makes it a powerful physical tool, it also facilitates mental visualisation. Grouping beads into a few sets makes them easier to hold in visual memory – just as dividing long telephone numbers into three or four-digit chunks helps us remember them. “Because the physical abacus groups beads into columns, it’s easier to hold a mental image of the abacus in your head,” says Frank.
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