#educationalresearch — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #educationalresearch, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: August 27, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Abacus training is linked to better math and memory skills in elementary students
Elementary school students who learn to calculate using a mental abacus tend to perform better on math tests than their peers. A recent study published in Learning and Individual Differences suggests that this educational technique is associated with stronger arithmetic performance. The research indicates that this math advantage is partly explained by enhanced numerical processing skills alongside improved attention and memory.
Abacus-based mental calculation is a distinct educational strategy popular in many East Asian classrooms. Students first learn to solve arithmetic problems by manipulating the beads of a physical abacus. An upper bead represents the number five, while lower beads represent the number one. Moving beads toward a central beam indicates addition, while moving them away indicates subtraction.
As students gain proficiency with the physical tool, they are taught to visualize the abacus in their minds. They begin to perform mental calculations by moving their fingers in the air, mimicking the physical manipulation of the beads. Eventually, the students rely entirely on this internal visual representation to solve complex math problems without any physical aids.
Educational psychologists generally divide the cognitive foundations of math into two categories. Domain-specific skills involve direct numerical processing, such as recognizing magnitudes and sequencing numbers. Domain-general skills encompass broader mental abilities, such as short-term memory, attention control, and spatial reasoning, which help a person maintain focus and juggle information during calculations.
Prior research has shown that abacus instruction is linked to better math scores, but the underlying cognitive pathways have remained somewhat ambiguous. To investigate how these specific and general mental skills contribute to the abacus advantage, an investigative team designed a new evaluation. The research was led by Fan Liu and Xuelian Ge of Zhejiang University, alongside colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin.
The researchers evaluated 441 elementary school children across grades one through five at three different schools in Qiqihar, China. Within each grade level, the researchers randomly selected intact classrooms to compare. Half of the participants were in classes that received two hours of abacus instruction each week, while the control group received standard math and reading exercises.
The evaluation process began with a series of arithmetic and numerical processing assessments. The students completed timed paper-and-pencil tests involving addition, subtraction, and finding missing terms in an equation. Students in the third grade and above also completed multiplication and division problems. The numerical processing portion asked children to count figures within a time limit, connect randomly distributed numbers in ascending order, and compare numerical values.
The results showed that students in the abacus group outperformed the control group in overall arithmetic skills. This advantage was observable across all five grade levels. Even first-grade students, who had only received three months of abacus instruction at the time of testing, displayed a measurable advantage in math scores over their peers. The abacus students also performed better on the numerical processing tasks, demonstrating a heightened ability to connect and compare numbers.
The researchers also looked at the students’ end-of-semester mathematics exam scores. These school-administered exams covered broader math applications, basic geometry, and complex problem-solving. The abacus group outperformed the control group on these real-world exams in grades two through five, mirroring the experimental test results and providing additional context for their academic achievement.
Next, the researchers administered a battery of nine online tests to measure domain-general cognitive abilities. These interactive tasks evaluated a wide range of mental functions. For example, spatial ability was measured by asking children to mentally rotate three-dimensional objects on a screen to find a matching shape. Cognitive flexibility was tested using a card-sorting game where students had to adapt to changing categorization rules based on color, shape, or number.
The online battery also heavily tested memory and attention. Short-term memory was evaluated by having students memorize picture pairs or repeat a sequence of flashing squares on a grid. To assess attention, students completed cancellation tasks where they had to quickly scan hundreds of numbers and cross out specific target digits within a tight time limit.
The abacus students exhibited distinct advantages in short-term memory and attention compared to the control group. However, these specific cognitive benefits did not appear uniformly across all ages. The advantages in sustained attention and memory were most pronounced in the fourth and fifth graders. This suggests that domain-general cognitive benefits might require several years of sustained abacus practice to fully emerge as an observable trait.
To understand how these different skill sets interacted, the researchers conducted statistical mediation analyses. This mathematical modeling technique helps determine whether an observed effect, like better math scores, is explained by intermediate variables, such as memory or number sense. The researchers wanted to see if the enhanced cognitive and numerical skills directly accounted for the arithmetic advantage seen in the abacus group.
The models revealed that numerical processing skills partially explained the math advantage for abacus students in grades two through five. This means the abacus training likely boosted their foundational number sense, which in turn improved their math test scores. In contrast, general cognitive skills like attention and short-term memory only acted as explanatory bridges for students in the fourth and fifth grades.
These patterns suggest a shifting developmental pathway for students learning mental abacus calculation. In the early years of elementary school, the math benefits appear strictly tied to an improved understanding of numbers and magnitudes. For first-grade students, the math advantage was not explained by these intermediate variables, suggesting that their early benefits might stem from basic physical familiarity with numbers rather than internalized cognitive changes.
As students accumulate more years of practice, the continuous mental visualization required by the abacus begins to heavily engage broader cognitive functions. Holding a mental image of shifting beads in the mind’s eye requires a robust working memory and sustained attention. Those enhanced general mental capacities then provide an additional boost to their arithmetic performance.
There are a few caveats to consider when interpreting these results. The study relied on a cross-sectional design, meaning it compared different cohorts of students at a single point in time rather than tracking the same individuals over several years. Because of this design, the researchers cannot definitively prove a causal sequence where prolonged training directly alters cognitive development over time. A longitudinal study tracking the same children from kindergarten through fifth grade would provide firmer evidence.
Additionally, the researchers compared intact classrooms rather than randomly assigning individual students to different training groups. The researchers noted that baseline testing was not conducted prior to the start of the first grade. While the first-grade control and abacus groups were comparable on most initial measures, the lack of baseline data means pre-existing differences or teacher-specific variables cannot be entirely ruled out as contributing factors to the observed outcomes.
The study, “Enhancing children’s arithmetic skills through abacus learning: contributions of numerical processing skills and domain-general cognitive abilities,” was authored by Fan Liu, Xuelian Ge, Peng Peng, Tianyong Xu, Tengfei Wang, and Feiyan Chen.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AbacusLearning #MathSkills #ElementaryEducation #NumericalProcessing #WorkingMemory #AttentionControl #MentalMath #EducationalResearch #CognitiveDevelopment #STEMEducation
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🚀 CIDER Cohort V is now open for applications!
✨ Could the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER) be the right opportunity for you?
📅 Apply by 18 October 2026
Find out more and apply: https://www.leibniz-bildung.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/CIDER_V_Call-for-Applications-1.pdf
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DATE: August 16, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Children can understand falsification through evidence as early as age 4
URL: https://www.psypost.org/children-can-understand-falsification-through-evidence-as-early-as-age-4/
A study in Germany found that, at 4 years of age, approximately half of children demonstrated the ability to provide valid verbal counterarguments. This percentage increased to 70% at 5.5 years old. At 4 years of age, 90% of children were able to select evidence that clearly refutes a false causal claim and proves the correct one. The paper was published in Developmental Psychology.
Scientific argumentation is the process of using evidence and reasoning to support, challenge, or revise explanations about how the world works. Rather than simply stating an opinion, a scientific argument connects a claim to observations or other evidence that can show why the claim should be accepted or rejected.
An important part of this process is being able to distinguish strong evidence from weak or misleading evidence, especially when several possible explanations exist. Scientific argumentation also involves considering alternative explanations and identifying evidence that could disconfirm a favored hypothesis.
These skills are central not only to scientific research but also to everyday decisions in which people must evaluate competing claims. They have become increasingly important in a world where people encounter large amounts of conflicting information through the internet and social media.
Study author Özgün Köksal and colleagues studied early scientific argumentation abilities and their development in preschool children. They focused on the development of these abilities from 4 to 5.5 years of age.
Study participants were 222 children from an urban area in Germany. The study authors note that participants predominantly came from White middle-class families. After some children dropped out or were excluded for various reasons, the final sample consisted of 191 4-year-olds. 85 of them were girls.
When the children reached 5.5 years of age, 25 more children dropped out and 1 was excluded, resulting in a total of 179 5.5-year-old participants. The children did not have any diagnosed developmental delays or disorders.
At both time points (when the children were 4 and when they were 5.5 years old) the children participated in two research sessions 2 weeks apart. The sessions were video and audio recorded. This study was a part of a larger project in which children completed many different tasks. The authors of this study focused on the children’s performance in the argumentation task.
The argumentation task consisted of two main phases: a learning phase and a test phase. The whole task lasted approximately 15 minutes. The learning phase was focused on children discovering what causes an LED light on a lightbox to switch on. There were 13 paper boxes varying in size and shape, some having a black dot and some not. The study authors set the light to activate when a paper box with that black dot was set on the lightbox, while the size and shape of the paper box were irrelevant.
At the start, the experimenter introduced a child to a puppet by having the child play simple games with the puppet and learning that the puppet can make mistakes. In the next part of this phase, children interacted with the lightbox and paper boxes and explored which boxes activate the light and which do not. They learned that it is the paper boxes with the black dot that activate the light.
In the test phase, the puppet made an incorrect claim about which features activate the light, such as claiming that size is important. The study authors then observed how children provided counterarguments and asked questions to get them to elaborate on their arguments.
In the last part of this phase, children were tasked to refute the puppet’s false claim by choosing an object. They chose between one object that could clearly be used to refute the puppet’s claim and another that was not good evidence. More specifically, the puppet claimed that big objects cause light. The clear evidence object had the black dot, but was small (meaning it was not big). The other object had the black dot, but was also big, and thus did not constitute clear evidence that the size of an object does not matter.
This setup was used when the children were 4 years old. When the children were 5.5 years old, the materials differed. The study authors used thirteen cubes differing in material (wood versus Styrofoam) and color, and having a silver stripe or not, but the principles were the same. The games used during the warm-up were also somewhat different.
The study authors also used the results of assessments of children’s general cognitive abilities and knowledge, executive functions (mental skills that include memory, flexible thinking, and self-control), theory of mind abilities (the ability to recognize mental states of others, and understand what they are thinking, believing, or feeling), and metacognition (the awareness of one’s own psychological processes).
Results showed that, in the learning phase of the argumentation task, 97% of 4-year-olds and 99% of 5.5-year-olds correctly predicted whether the objects they interacted with would trigger the light or not. In the testing phase, when the puppet made a false hypothesis about what triggers the light, 62% of 4-year-olds and 74% of 5.5-year-olds disagreed with it.
Importantly, at 4 years of age, around half of the children demonstrated the ability to provide valid verbal counterarguments. This increased to 70% at 5.5 years of age. At 4 years of age, 90% of children (who all knew the cause of the light) were able to deliberately choose clear disconfirming evidence in response to the puppet’s false claims about what causes light (the object that had a black dot, but was not big). The ability to provide valid arguments was found to be correlated with some aspects of children’s cognitive abilities, but these associations were generally weak.
The study authors concluded that as early as 4 years old, children exhibit a genuine understanding of proving a claim false through evidence. They can distinguish clear, isolated evidence from ambiguous, mixed evidence when confronted with a claim they know to be false. The associations with cognitive abilities suggest that the development in argumentation from 4 to 5.5 years of age primarily revolves around the capacity to use diverse evidence. This is related to children’s ability to understand multiple complex rules and perspectives.
The study contributes to scientific knowledge about human cognitive development. However, the study was conducted on a group of children from predominantly middle-class families in an urban area of Germany, a highly developed country. The study authors report that 74% of mothers of participating children had a university education. Results on children from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds might differ.
The paper, “Let Me Show Why You Are Wrong”: The Origins of Scientific Argumentation, Its Development, and Cognitive Predictors, was authored by Özgün Köksal, Andrea Saffran, and Beate Sodian.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/children-can-understand-falsification-through-evidence-as-early-as-age-4/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ScientificArgumentation #ChildDevelopment #EarlyLearning #EvidenceBasedReasoning #CognitiveDevelopment #CriticalThinkingSkills #PreschoolEducation #EducationalResearch #DevelopmentalPsychology #Counterarguments
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📢 #Docs und #Postdocs aufgepasst: Für die Workshops der #FDZ-Herbstakademie gibt es noch freie Plätze!
Jetzt anmelden und die Methoden der empirischen #Bildungsforschung näher kennenlernen! Infos zur Anmeldung gibt es hier 👉️ https://www2.iqb.hu-berlin.de/institut/v/v011
🔁 BITTE TEILEN!
#Bildungsforschung #Forschung #Forschungsmethoden #EducationalResearch #Research #ResearchMethods
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The new issue of #ChangingPopulations features research led by Professor Jackie Wahba OBE, which shows that strong host-country language skills can improve belonging, reduce bullying and support educational success among #immigrant children - page 7
▶️ https://sway.cloud.microsoft/6PeRZlzYry4nhGtm?ref=Link
#languagelearning #languageskills #languageproficiency #education #schools #socialinclusion #academicsuccess #studentachievement #socialscience #migration #educationalresearch #OECD #childdevelopment #economics #population
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"Reflections, Practices, and Reuse" - das NW 12 "Open Research in Education" am 19./20.8. auf der #ecer2026
19.8.
🔶From Log Data to Research Data: Quality, Documentation, Reuse, and Protection in Large-Scale #EducationalStudies
🔶#OpenScience, Replicability and Transparency in #SystematicReviews
🔶Open Citation Data for #EducationalResearch
🔶Mapping European Educational Research
20.8.
🔷 #EduTopics
🔷 Meeting NW 12
@dipf_aktuell @SonjaBayer @ChristophSchindler @tamaraheck @EERA #eduresearch #edusci -
Many thanks for the great conference and the invitation to https://aidipe2026.aidipe.org (in Granada) for the colloquium "Research, dissemination and scientific communication" with Carmen Carmona Rodríguez (University of Valencia), Marit Honerød Hoveid (@EERA / NTNU), and Pilar Rico Castro (FECYT), and for the presentation on ‘Building an Open European #EducationalResearch Landscape’.
#openscience #diamondoa #openaccess #OpenEducation #Bildungsforschung
@EERA @FachportalPaedagogik @dipf_aktuell -
📢 Working with educational datasets in psychology?
Consider publishing a data paper in the upcoming Journal of Open Psychology Data (JOPD) special issue on educational datasets. Contributions across all learning stages, from early childhood to adult learning, are welcome, especially datasets enabling secondary analyses.
🗓 Deadline: June 30, 2026
🔗 https://openpsychologydata.metajnl.com/announcements#call-for-data-papers---special-issue:-educational-datasets-for-psychological-research#OpenScience #OpenData #EducationalResearch #Psychology #FAIRData #DataPapers
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Freitag nächster Woche ist es wieder so weit: unser #DHELab setzt seine Last Friday's Lab Talks mit dem folgenden #Onlinevortrag fort:
Attention Pending– Kulturelle Vermittlungsstrategien im postdigitalen Raum
Mit Dr. Florian Windhager @worknet🗓️Fr 28.11.2025 | 12-13 Uhr
➡️
https://bbf.dipf.de/de/aktuell/termine/dhelab-vortrag-2025-11Alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen!
#DigitalHistory #DH #histed #histodons #glam #museum #educationalresearch
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⏰ Save the date! #IWMLecture by Prof. Dr. Hendrik Drachsler: Towards highly informative #LearningAnalytics with #AI
➡️ Tuesday, Nov 25, 2025, 13 – 15 pm (large conference room 2, IWM/Schleichstr. 6, Tübingen).✔️ Participation online: please send an 📧 e-mail to redaktion(at)iwm-tuebingen.de
ℹ️ More information: https://iwm-tuebingen.de/en/research/lectures/hendrik_drachsler_learning_analytics
#KI #EducationalResearch -
Erfolgreicher Auftakt zur CIDER-LERN Conference 2025!
Ein Dank an unsere Mit-Veranstalter @bib_bund und CIDER-Koordination @leibniz_bildung, sowie an Orla Doyle (Dublin) für ihre Keynote zum Thema „The Effectiveness of Early Life Investments". Heute starten wir in den zweiten Tag mit Poster Sessions, Kurz-Vorträgen, Diskussionen und natürlich der Keynote und LIfBi Lecture von Samuel Greiff (@tu_muenchen). -
#EduReads - Open Call
You've come across something worth reading 📚 👍 and the community of educational researchers should know about it?
You're welcome to send your literature recommendation and a short "why" 🙂 to the Education Research Portal: https://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/en/forschungsinformation/eduresearch-social.htmlWe'd like to make a toot of it. Maybe once a month? Feel free to spread the word.
#ResearchLiterature
#Literature #EducationalResearch #EducationalScience -
@petersuber @infodocket Hier noch ein Artikel dazu:
Major Education Resource Set to Shut Down This Week. The federal Department of Education maintains an open access database of more than 2 million documents dating back to the 1960s. It will cease operating Wednesday due to DOGE cuts.
https://www.governing.com/policy/major-education-resource-set-to-shut-down-this-week
#eric #eduresearch #educationalresearch #Erziehungswissenschaft #Bildungsforschung #Fachliteratur #education #openaccess -
🎓 Call for Papers der Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung (ZfW): Bildung im Fokus – Weiterbildungsberichterstattung neu denken!
📅 Abstracts bis 20.09.2025
#Weiterbildung #EducationalResearch #CallForPapers #ZfW #LifelongLearning #EducationMonitoring #AdultLearning #OpenAccess -
@samir Wild speculation: 98% of the people who say 'artificial intelligence' have never even heard any of these terms.
In my professional bubble (#EducationalResearch), everyone talks about the potentials and benefits of 'AI' these days - but pretty much no one has the slightest clue of what that is, how it works, and what it can and can't do.
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The next three days, I will toot some work-related content from the annual #GEBF25 #EducationalResearch conference in #Mannheim, Germany. If you're not interested, simply mute the hashtag. :awesome:
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Phew … just finished the last of my reviews for this year's #EARLI #EducationalResearch conference in #Graz, Austria.
I also broke all previous records by rejecting 50% of the proposals as they were obviously written by some LLM/AI chatbots and didn't make any sense at all. I guess this is the 'future of science' we were all waiting for… 😑
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🗓️☝️ Am 5.-6. Dezember findet am Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe @LIfBi_Bamberg die 9. Internationale #NEPS-Konferenz statt.
Den thematischen Rahmen für den interdisziplinären Austausch zu aktuellen Projekten in der #Bildungsforschung bildet die National Educational Panel Study (#NEPS).
Veranstalter ist das #FDZ am LIfBi.
➡️ Infos und Anmeldung: https://www.neps-data.de/neps-conference2024
#Bildungsforschung #EducationalResearch #Forschungsdaten #forschungsdatenmanagement #FDM #RDM #ResearchData
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Auch der #CfP für die Nachwuchstagung am 3. Juli ist gestartet, Einreichungen bitte bis 20. Juni
https://ifs.ep.tu-dortmund.de/dortmunder-symposium-der-empirischen-bildungsforschung/nachwuchstagung/
#Bildungsforschung #edureseach #educationalresearch #erziehungswissenschaft -
Das IfS der Uni Dortmund lädt am 4. Juli ein zum
9th Dortmund Symposium on Empirical Educational Research „Socio-emotional and cognitive development in learning: educational goals in competition?!“
Hier das Programm: https://ifs.ep.tu-dortmund.de/dortmunder-symposium-der-empirischen-bildungsforschung/programm-haupttagung/
#Bildungsforschung #EmpirischeBildungsforschung #erziehungswissenschaft #eduresearch #educationalresearch -
But in all these years I found it difficult to get a grasp on how #EducationalResearch understands and conceptualises #ControlGroups.
In my health-oriented research this discussion is very prevalent.
#OutcomeDefinition #EstimandAnd while I admired the early uptake of...
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At the moment, I am reviewing submissions to a rather prominent conference in #EducationalResearch.
One of the submissions is about AI chatbots writing texts, and the text is so weird that I can't help but suspecting it was written by an AI chatbot itself. 🤖
Nice try though. 🤭
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UK Higher Education
“The one jaw-dropping thing I’ve learned in my first three months is just how perilous the higher education sector is financially. We really have a worrying financial future.”
The University of Oxford’s new vice-chancellor, Irene Tracey, speaking at the Higher Education Policy Institute and Advance HE
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/root-and-branch-review-funding-needed-says-oxford-v-c
#HigherEducation
#HigherEd
#EducationalResearch
#AcademicChatter
@academicchatter
@academicsunite -
Social class, sleep, and health:
Our new research suggests that poorer quality sleep partly explains social class differences in mental and physical health among students in higher education.
Open access: http://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12645
#SocialPsychology
@socialpsych
#HigherEducation
#HigherEd
#EducationalResearch
#EDI
@edutooters
#StudentSuccess
#SocialClass
#Sleep
#MentalHealth