This simple game makes kids better at math

Although math skills are considered notoriously hard to change, Johns Hopkins University researchers improved preschoolers’ arithmetic performance simply by exercising their intuitive number sense with a quick computer game.

Video transcript

[playful music and whistling]
Little girl:1, 2, 3
Woman: Do you think math is easy or hard?
Hard.
Is math hard for kids?
Hard.
Easy!
Easy.
Man:I t's easy? Why?
Uh. I don't know.
[playful music and whistling]
Graphic: Johns Hopkins Researchers studying the human mind found a simple game that makes kids better at math.
Computer female voice: Let's play a game!
Each of them will have some dots.
Children are playing this computerized dot game in which they see two collections of dots.
Now which ones more?
The dots are flashed too quickly to count so they just have to use that intuitive gut number sense that we know we share with other animal species and that even newborn infants have.
Blue!
Computer:That's right!
All kids have to do is tell us whether there are more blue dots or more yellow dots.
Yellow!
Computer:You did it!
Awesome job!
1, 2, 3, 4
After the dot game we gave children a portion of a standardized math assessment.
Which one's closer to 3 when you count?
The children who in the dot game had the opportunity to sharpen their abilities by starting with the easier problems and gradually moving toward the hard problems did better at math.
20!
Our research showed basically with a five minute simple computer game that has nothing to do with numbers children actually could change their math performance from like a 60 percentile to like an 80 percentile.
Good job! What about seven?
By making kids better at doing these really simple dot judgements we also made them better at school based math at least temporarily.
How did you know whether there was more blue or more yellow?
Because I'm intelligent!
[laughter]
These results are really exciting to use because they show a very clear connection between an evolutionarily ancient set of abilities and a uniquely human set of formal math abilities.
Computer: Yay!
That raises lots of interesting questions including how long this kind of effect lasts and whether we can also improve children's math performance in a classroom setting.
[gasps]
Blue!
That's right!
[playful music and whistling]

Video by:
JHU Office of Communications
video@jhu.edu
Photographer: Dave Schmelick
Producer/Editor: Len Turner, Director of Video Strategy