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. 2025 Jan-Feb;96(1):251-268.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.14146. Epub 2024 Sep 18.

Finger counting training enhances addition performance in kindergarteners

Céline Poletti  1 , Marie Krenger  1 , Marie Létang  2 , Brune Hennequin  2 , Catherine Thevenot  1
Affiliations

Finger counting training enhances addition performance in kindergarteners

Céline Poletti et al. Child Dev. 2025 Jan-Feb.

Abstract

Our study on 328 five- to six-year-old kindergarteners (mainly White European living in France, 152 girls) shows that children who do not count on their fingers and undergo finger counting training exhibit drastic improvement in their addition skills from pre-test to post-test (i.e., accuracy from 37.3% to 77.1%) compared to a passive control group (39.6% to 47.8%) (p < .001, η p 2 = .15). This result was replicated on a much smaller scale (37 five- to six-year-olds, mainly White European, 22 girls) but in more controlled setup and was further replicated with an active control group (84 five- to six-year-olds, mainly White European, 37 girls). Therefore, we demonstrate here for the first time that training finger counting constitutes a highly effective method to improve kindergarteners' arithmetic performance.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Graphical representation of the classroom repartition (top panel) and of the course of the study for the experimental and control groups (bottom panel) in Experiment 1. *Post‐test considered as pre‐test for children who entered the intervention program after being in the control group.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Illustration of the “ALL” strategy demonstration on fingers during the training of Experiment 1, Experiment 2, and Experiment 3. a) First operand represented; b) Second operand represented; c) All fingers counted again
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Numbers of children, percentages (with SD) and ranges of correctly solved additions, and percentages (with SD) and ranges of finger use across the different trajectories between pre‐ and immediate post‐test for the control and experimental groups in Experiment 1. FU, finger users; NFU, non‐finger users.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Percentages of finger use at pre‐ and immediate post‐tests in children from the experimental and control groups as a function of their behavior at pre‐test (finger users or not) in Experiment 1.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Percentages of correct responses in the addition task at pre‐ and immediate post‐tests in children from the experimental and control groups as a function of their behavior at pre‐test (finger users or not) in Experiment 1.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Numbers of non‐finger users, percentages (with SD) and ranges of correctly solved additions, and percentages (with SD) and ranges of finger use across the different trajectories between pre‐test, immediate post‐test, and delayed post‐test for the experimental group in Experiment 1.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Percentages of finger use at pre‐ and post‐tests in children from the experimental and control groups as a function of their behavior at pre‐test (finger users or not) in Experiment 2.
FIGURE 8
FIGURE 8
Percentages of correctly solved additions at pre‐ and post‐tests in children from the experimental and control groups as a function of their behavior at pre‐test (finger users or not) in Experiment 2.
FIGURE 9
FIGURE 9
Percentages of finger use at pre‐ and post‐tests in children from the experimental and active control groups as a function of their behavior at pre‐test (finger users or not) in Experiment 3.
FIGURE 10
FIGURE 10
Percentages of correctly solved additions at pre‐ and post‐tests in children from the experimental and active control groups as a function of their behavior at pre‐test (finger users or not) in Experiment 3.
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References

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