Psychological features of mental arithmetics’ learning

Abstract

This article presents research results of psychological features of mental arithmetics’ impact on children’s memory. It also provides information on similar studies of foreign scientists. The studies that are described in this article are very important. In addition, such kind of research not conducted on the territory of our republic, or the results have not been presented to wide availability. Because of this reason, today, this method requires not only the validation, but also verification of its effectiveness at Kazakhstani sample. Moreover, because of increasing of private organizations’ number, which offer training services for mental arithmetic, and try to justify of improving cognitive abilities of students by foreign colleagues studies conducted in the last century. In this regard, the study was conducted, which included 60 participants, aged from 6 to 9 years old (primary school age) who were divided into 2 groups. The experimental group consisted of children engaged in mental arithmetic for 3 months. The control group consisted of kids who had never trained mental arithmetic. The study was conducted in two phases, the first phase of the study corresponds to the first week of training the experimental group, the second stage corresponds to the end of the first level of training, that is three months after the start of mental arithmetic classes. The research problem which is identified by the authors evaluate and analyze by two groups’ data. Methods of the research are 10 words A.R. Luria, indirect memorizing A.N. Leontiev IV series, Toulouse Pieroni test (modification of proofreading tests for primary school children), method of Dembo-Rubinstein in the modification Yan’shin, and projective technique of M.Z. Dukarevich. The study results are equally important for the psychology and pedagogy. Research has an interdisciplinary character, written at the intersection of psychology and pedagogy. Statistical methods of psychological analysis of the data was carried out in SPSS15 program to identify significant differences in psychological indicators among primary school children. The study showed that mental arithmetic method has a positive impact on cognitive skills. Additionally, analysis of the 10 words of A.R. Luria detected requires a long-term study of qualitative differences between control and experimental groups in order to define mental arithmetics’ impact on cognitive abilities of junior classes’ pupils.