Math Skills Lead to Improved Response Time
It’s a question all new parents ask themselves: when should I start preparing my child for school? According to researchers at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, the sooner the better.
A research team led by Vinod Menon, Ph.D., found that early math lessons resulted in significant, positive changes to children’s brains. How significant? Menon discovered that approaches to problem-solving improved noticeably in an unexpectedly short timeframe, observing, “the surprise is that you would see significant changes within one year.”
Improved Response Time
According to Menon, the key finding was that “the brain regions haven’t changed – it’s the way they respond to simple and to complex arithmetic tasks that have changed.”
In just one year, there were important shifts in two key regions of the brain. This led to better responses to complex addition problems in the areas of the brain responsible for manipulating information in working memory and for representing numerical quantity.
The research also found that there was better communication between different regions of the brain.
Math Lessons – Massive Impact on the Brain
All that said, it’s pretty clear that math lessons can have a massive impact on brain development at a young age.
Kumon understands the importance of these findings and we factor this into our deliberate practice approach to learning.
Rote repetition – a memorization technique based on repetition – doesn’t single-handedly improve academic performance, so we’ve crafted a powerful self-learning method to get the most out of every lesson by making sure all practice is deliberate. Got your own point of view on early-learning for kids? Let us know in the comments below!
Learn about Kumon’s Early Learner Program.