Assessment of auditory working memory in children with abacus training

Abacus involves remembering multiple numbers and calculations, and thus auditory working memory is getting trained. Hence, auditory working memory could be enhanced in children who practice working memory. In the present study, it is attempted to examine the difference in the auditory working memory of the children with abacus training and children without abacus training.

The study was carried out to compare the score and reaction time for digit forward test, digit backward, ascending digit span and descending digit span test in individuals with and without abacus training and to correlate the level of abacus training with the scores and reaction time for all the tests in individuals with abacus training. The participants were divided based on those with and without abacus training between the age of 9-13 years. The children with the abacus training group were taking intensive abacus training in the range of 2-4 years.

The results of the study revealed that children with abacus training had significantly better reaction time and scores than children without abacus training with effect size between 0.73 and 0.91 which suggests a strong difference. The results also showed moderate to strong correlation (r = 0.53-0.84) between the abacus levels and scores and reaction time for the auditory working memory tests.

The results agree with previous studies, which also report superior auditory performance and enhanced auditory working memory in children with abacus training.