What's the News: Most of us need everyone to stop talking when we perform mental math. But for children trained to do math visually with a "mental abacus," verbal disturbances roll off their backs, prompting psychologists to posit that unlike the rest of us, they aren't routing their calculations through words. What's the Context:
While some of the most brilliant mathematicians have been known for their ability to "think in shapes," and Einstein said he used "sensations of a kinesthetic or muscular type" to come up with his breakthroughs, math is usually taught much like reading: a system of symbols to be interpreted.
It's been suggest that the mental abacus, a system in which children are taught to use a physical abacus and then learn to manipulate it mentally, uses visual, rather than verbal, brain processes, judging from fMRI studies. And it seems to work phenomenally well: the winner of ...
