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New research sheds light on how children’s brains memorize facts

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New research sheds light on how children’s brains memorize facts

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Very interesting!

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As children shift from counting on their fingers to remembering math facts, the hippocampus and its functional circuits support the brain's construction of adultlike ways of using memory.

As children learn basic arithmetic, they gradually switch from solving problems by counting on their fingers to pulling facts from memory. The shift comes more easily for some kids than for others, but no one knows why.

Now, new brain-imaging research gives the first evidence drawn from a longitudinal study to explain how the brain reorganizes itself as children learn math facts. A precisely orchestrated group of brain changes, many involving the memory center known as the hippocampus, are essential to the transformation, according to a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The results, published online Aug. 17 in Nature Neuroscience, explain brain reorganization during normal development of cognitive skills and will serve as a point of comparison for future studies of what goes awry in the brains of children with learning disabilities.

"We wanted to understand how children acquire new knowledge, and determine why some children learn to retrieve facts from memory better than others," said Vinod Menon, PhD, the Rachael L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD, Professor and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and the senior author of the study. "This work provides insight into the dynamic changes that occur over the course of cognitive development in each child."

The study also adds to prior research into the differences between how children's and adults' brains solve math problems. Children use certain brain regions, including the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, very differently from adults when the two groups are solving the same types of math problems, the study showed.

"It was surprising to us that the hippocampal and prefrontal contributions to memory-based problem-solving during childhood don't look anything like what we would have expected for the adult brain," said postdoctoral scholar Shaozheng Qin, PhD, who is the paper's lead author.

Charting the shifting strategy

In the study, 28 children solved simple math problems while receiving two functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans; the scans were done about 1.2 years apart. The researchers also scanned 20 adolescents and 20 adults at a single time point. At the start of the study, the children were ages 7-9. The adolescents were 14-17 and the adults were 19-22. The participants had normal IQs. Because the study examined normal math learning, potential participants with math-related learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were excluded. The children and adolescents were studying math in school; the researchers did not provide any math instruction.

During the study, as the children aged from an average of 8.2 to 9.4 years, they became faster and more accurate at solving math problems, and relied more on retrieving math facts from memory and less on counting. As these shifts in strategy took place, the researchers saw several changes in the children's brains. The hippocampus, a region with many roles in shaping new memories, was activated more in children's brains after one year. Regions involved in counting, including parts of the prefrontal and parietal cortex, were activated less.

The scientists also saw changes in the degree to which the hippocampus was connected to other parts of children's brains, with several parts of the prefrontal, anterior temporal cortex and parietal cortex more strongly connected to the hippocampus after one year. Crucially, the stronger these connections, the greater was each individual child's ability to retrieve math facts from memory, a finding that suggests a starting point for future studies of math-learning disabilities.

Although children were using their hippocampus more after a year, adolescents and adults made minimal use of their hippocampus while solving math problems. Instead, they pulled math facts from well-developed information stores in the neocortex.

Memory scaffold

"What this means is that the hippocampus is providing a scaffold for learning and consolidating facts into long-term memory in children," said Menon, who is also the Rachel L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD, Professor at the medical school. Children's brains are building a schema for mathematical knowledge. The hippocampus helps support other parts of the brain as adultlike neural connections for solving math problems are being constructed. "In adults this scaffold is not needed because memory for math facts has most likely been consolidated into the neocortex," he said. Interestingly, the research also showed that, although the adult hippocampus is not as strongly engaged as in children, it seems to keep a backup copy of the math information that adults usually draw from the neocortex.

The researchers compared the level of variation in patterns of brain activity as children, adolescents and adults correctly solved math problems. The brain's activity patterns were more stable in adolescents and adults than in children, suggesting that as the brain gets better at solving math problems its activity becomes more consistent.

The next step, Menon said, is to compare the new findings about normal math learning to what happens in children with math-learning disabilities.

The hippocampus is providing a scaffold for learning and consolidating facts into long-term memory in children.

"In children with math-learning disabilities, we know that the ability to retrieve facts fluently is a basic problem, and remains a bottleneck for them in high school and college," he said. "Is it that the hippocampus can't provide a reliable scaffold to build good representations of math facts in other parts of the brain during the early stages of learning, and so the child continues to use inefficient strategies to solve math problems? We want to test this."

Other Stanford co-authors of the study are former postdoctoral scholar Soohyun Cho, PhD; postdoctoral scholar Tianwen Chen, PhD; and Miriam Rosenberg-Lee, PhD, instructor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants HD047520, HD059205 and MH101394), Stanford's Child Health Research Institute, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, Stanford's Clinical and Translational Science Award (grant UL1RR025744) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Information about Stanford's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which also supported the work, is available at http://psychiatry.stanford.edu.

Stanford Medicine integrates research, medical education and health care at its three institutions - Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care (formerly Stanford Hospital & Clinics), and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford. For more information, please visit the Office of Communication & Public Affairs site at http://mednews.stanford.edu.

Stanford Medicine is leading the biomedical revolution in precision health, defining and developing the next generation of care that is proactive, predictive and precise.

Stanford Medicine's unrivaled atmosphere of breakthrough thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration has fueled a long history of achievements.
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New research sheds light on how children's brains memorize facts

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As children shift from counting on their fingers to remembering math facts, the hippocampus and its functional circuits support the brain's construction of adultlike ways of using memory. As children learn basic arithmetic, they gradually switch from solving problems by counting on their fingers to pulling facts from memory.

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What Is the Relationship Between Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching with Technology (FASTT Math) and Improved Student Computational Skills?

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What Is the Relationship Between Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching with Technology (FASTT Math) and Improved Student Computational Skills?

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Developing Fact Fluency - Lee Pesky Learning Center

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Developing Fact Fluency - Lee Pesky Learning Center

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Developing math fact fluency

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Fluency: Simply Fast and Accurate? I Think Not!

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Procedural fluency or conceptual understanding--math educators have debated for years which is more important. I sided with conceptual understanding until my colleague Angela McIver helped me see

the value of procedural fluency in terms of stamina. Like all of us, students have finite energy. The more energy they use for procedures, the less energy they have for problem solving. And the less energy they have for problem solving, the less likely they are to gain conceptual understanding. A lack of procedural fluency can therefore contribute to a lack of conceptual understanding.

The issue, then, isn't if we should target procedural fluency but rather how we should target it. And, how to do so while also targeting conceptual understanding, as called for by the Common Core State Standards (the "dual intensity" instructional shift I mentioned in my last post).

Of course, it's hard to help students achieve something if you don't know what it is. A lot of teachers think procedural fluency is synonymous with "knowing your math facts," but it's more than that, as defined in the National Research Council book, Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics:

Does procedural fluency involve memorizing multiplication tables and other facts? Sure, but it also involves thinking. Students must know when, as opposed to just how, to use a procedure. And they must not only be able to perform procedures accurately, but also flexibly and efficiently--again, think stamina.

To illustrate the thinking aspect of procedural fluency, I ask teachers at workshops how their students would solve the following problem: 7/11 = ?/121. Middle and high school teachers say most of their students would cross-multiply, which provides the correct solution of 77 (7 x 121 / 11). Elementary teachers say most of their students would use the equivalent fractions approach, which also provides the correct solution (121/11 = 11; 11 x 7 = 77). Which approach is more efficient? Well, which is easier: multiplying 7 x 121 or 7 x 11?

One reason students don't always choose the most efficient method is that they don't really choose any method. They just apply an algorithm without thinking. They know how to use procedures but not always when to use them. They perform procedures accurately but not always flexibly or efficiently. In other words, they lack procedural fluency.

This brings us back to the Common Core challenge of helping students develop procedural fluency while also helping them develop conceptual understanding. And here are a few suggestions for meeting this challenge:

Will these ideas ensure procedural fluency for students? No. They still need to know their facts in order to use procedures flexibly, accurately, and efficiently. In the above problem, for example, the equivalent fractions approach is only more efficient than cross-multiplying if students have memorized multiples of 11.

I'll address the facts-fluency connection further in a future post, since I don't have the stamina for it now. Check out Jo Boaler's recent Ed Week article, Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety, in the meantime.
Image by Vlue, provided by Dreamstime license Join my mailing list for announcements about webinars and the work I do to improve teaching and learning.

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Procedural Fluency: More Than Memorizing Math Facts (Opinion)

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Procedural fluency or conceptual understanding--math educators have debated for years which is more important. I sided with conceptual understanding until my colleague Angela McIver helped me see the value of procedural fluency in terms of stamina. Like all of us, students have finite energy. The...

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Rocket Math - Elementary Math Curriculum and Intervention Program

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Rocket Math - Elementary Math Curriculum and Intervention Program

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This is the program I have access to. I will be using this program to see if it improves students fact fluency. The website states: "Rocket Math is a ten-minutes a day paper and pencil, worksheet-based math facts supplemental practice curriculum. Students learn 2 facts and their reverses on each worksheet in a carefully controlled sequence which enables mastery at an individualized pace.  Students practice orally with a partner every day.  One minute timings assess when students are ready to move to the next set of facts."

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Rocket Math is a basic math curriculum and worksheet-based program that is the best learning tool and math program for kids.

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Michael Merzenich: Growing evidence of brain plasticity

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Michael Merzenich: Growing evidence of brain plasticity

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This video is about the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. We should never give up teaching because we are all capable of learning and improving.

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Michael Merzenich: Growing evidence of brain plasticity

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Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich looks at one of the secrets of the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. He's researching ways to harness the brain's plasticity to enhance our skills and recover lost function.

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Why Children Have Difficulties Mastering the Basic Number Combinations

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Why Children Have Difficulties Mastering the Basic Number Combinations

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http://schoolwires.henry.k12.ga.us/cms/lib08/GA01000549/Centricity/Domain/4011/Why%20Children%20Have%20Trouble%20with%20Basic%20Facts.pdf

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This is what a typical "Rocket Math" student folder would look like.

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Otter Creek - Research on mastering math facts

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Otter Creek - Research on mastering math facts

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https://www.oci-sems.com/ContentHTML/pdfs/Research%20and%20Results.pdf

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Developing Fluency with Basic Number Facts: Intervention for Students with Learning Disabilities

Katherine Garnett Learning Disabilities Research & Practice (1992) 7:210216 © 1992 Division for Learning Disabilities Reprinted with permission

ABSTRACT. The effects of math learning disabilities are widespread and often seriously problematic. Common among the diverse manifestations of math learning disabilities is lack of fluency with the basic number facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Insights from both cognitive psychology and LD intervention research are gathered here to shape teachers' understanding of the processes by which number fact fluency develops. For many students with learning disabilities, current methods of seatwork drill are wholly inadequate and possibly even counterproductive. Discussion includes assessment guidelines and specific teaching considerations for increasing number fact fluency in students with learning disabilities.