The use of fingers in addition: A longitudinal study in children from preschool to kindergarten

Previous research has established that finger counting in arithmetic positively correlates with accuracy in 5 ½ to 8-year-old children. Whether this relation also exists in younger children was unknown until the present study in which 172 children aged 4 ½ years (M = 56 months) were followed over one year across 3 sessions spaced 6 months apart. Initially, we observed 31 children who calculated on their fingers to solve addition problems, they were 43 at session 2 and 66 at session 3. Even though a minority of children used their fingers at each session, establishing their developmental pathways in the use of finger counting revealed that more than a half of them had used their fingers at least in one of the three sessions (87 children out of 172). Using this strategy proved highly advantageous because, at each session, finger users were more accurate than non-finger users, which reproduces the observations made in older children. Moreover, when children did not use their fingers, they were always more accurate if they had used their fingers in a previous session than if they had not. Children were also more likely to present accuracy improvement between two sessions when finger counting was observed for the first time or was repeatedly observed across sessions than when it had never been observed or was not observed in the prior session. Finally, children who never used their fingers across the three sessions corresponded to children with the lowest performance in addition and the lowest intellectual capacities. These results show that finger counting not only improves addition performance but also maximizes young children’s chances to develop good addition skills.