An ERP study on the influence of mental abacus calculation on subthreshold arithmetic priming in children

The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of mental abacus calculation training (MACT) on subliminal cognitive processes.

Twenty children with intensive MACT (MACT group) and 20 children without MACT (non-MACT group) were selected. The two groups of children were matched in age, sex, handedness and academic grade. The participants were tested with subthreshold arithmetic priming task while their neural activities were recorded with a 32-channel electroencephalogram system.

We found that MACT changed the subliminal cognitive mechanism of computational processing, speeding up the computation. MACT affected the computational processing mode. Specifically, in the identification stage, both groups of children adopted the visual space processing mode, while in the computing stage, the MACT group adopted a visual space processing mode, but the non-MACT group adopted a semantic processing mode. Moreover, MACT improved children's executive functions.

These results yielded insights into the effect of early abacus training on children's cognitive processing, providing a theoretical basis for the development and promotion of abacus training.