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Updated: Feb 27, 2026

Multimedia Battery for Assessment of Cognitive and Basic Skills in Mathematics BM-PROMA
Published on: August 28, 2021
Cognitive science in the field: A preschool intervention durably enhances intuitive but not formal mathematics
Moira R Dillon1, Harini Kannan2, Joshua T Dean3
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. mdillon@fas.harvard.edu spelke@wjh.harvard.edu eduflo@mit.edu.
Abstract:
Many poor children are underprepared for demanding primary school curricula. Research in cognitive science suggests that school achievement could be improved by preschool pedagogy in which numerate adults engage children's spontaneous, nonsymbolic mathematical concepts. To test this suggestion, we designed and evaluated a game-based preschool curriculum intended to exercise children's emerging skills in number and geometry. In a randomized field experiment with 1540 children (average age 4.9 years) in 214 Indian preschools, 4 months of math game play yielded marked and enduring improvement on the exercised intuitive abilities, relative to no-treatment and active control conditions. Math-trained children also showed immediate gains on symbolic mathematical skills but displayed no advantage in subsequent learning of the language and concepts of school mathematics.
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