Benefits of Abacus Learning on Brain Development

Children who learn with an abacus have a considerable advantage over those who follow traditional learning methods without an abacus.

Indeed, their test scores are higher, their confidence is greater, and their success in school and life surpasses that of their peers. With all these successes and almost unbelievable results, we must ask: what is the science behind the abacus?

It's 2020, and abacus-based learning still gives children a significant boost. Many parents wonder how this ancient tool helps modern children, who are increasingly surrounded by technology, to succeed in their studies. The answer is simple: it's the mental abacus.

The Mental Abacus

Children who use the mental abacus make remarkable progress. This progress even goes beyond mathematics. Students using the abacus develop a sense of confidence and self-esteem. They also excel in many other subjects, both in and out of school. Research on the effects of the mental abacus has been published since the 1970s. These studies cover cognitive development, social behaviors, memory retention, and the reversal of cognitive disorders.

A recent research publication, titled "Abacus in the Brain," followed the case of a mental abacus expert who suffered a stroke and rebuilt her ability to construct a mental abacus and perform advanced calculations over two years.

The study commented on how "abacus users not only skillfully manipulate the tool in its physical form but also acquire the ability to mentally calculate extraordinarily large numbers, often more than 10 digits, with unusual speed and accuracy."

The Abacus and the Brain Hemispheres

The brain consists of two hemispheres, the left and the right. The left side of the brain is used for logical processing, mathematical functions, sequencing, and linear processes.

The left side of the brain is the one primarily trained when children learn mathematics traditionally. The right side of the brain is used for imagination, visualization, intuition, and rhythm. When children learn the abacus, they train the right side of their brain. The abacus appeals to the need for visualization, imagination (mental abacus), and intuition. According to Abacus in the Brain, "previous behavioral work has shown that skilled abacus users perform fast and accurate mental calculation by manipulating a mental representation of an abacus, which is based on visual imagery."

The numbers on the abacus are displayed the same way every time, regardless of the operation applied to them. This type of consistency is the glue needed to solidify a child's understanding of mathematics. The abstract nature of numbers is difficult for a child to grasp, but with the abacus, the abstract becomes intuitive and confusion turns into enjoyment. The abacus works because the abacus makes sense.

Results

Children need to have their right brain hemisphere developed as early as possible. Much of early childhood education is "left-brain oriented": repetition, practice, testing, and more repetition. Overloading this teaching without proper balance from intuition and imagination will not allow a child's brain to develop fully, and many important concepts will not be understood.

For example, something as simple as subtraction can be shown in many ways, but if it's not explained in a manner intuitive to the child, in the way an abacus does, it will not be understood.

The abacus shows the child how to visualize problems. It does this using a simple concept like arithmetic, which is the foundation of mathematics and science. This then allows children to boost their intuition and imagination. Intuition and imagination are essential for understanding literary analysis, learning new languages, mastering geometry, calculus, and other high-level mathematics, and much more. Abacus students have a fully developed and engaged right brain, so the left brain is much more open to assimilating new ideas, retaining short-term memory, and collaborating with the right side to solve logic problems encountered in and out of the classroom.

Beyond Mathematics

As mentioned above, the science behind the abacus indicates that success goes beyond mathematics

Key Benefits of Abacus Learning:

• Child's Spatial Reasoning

The abacus is a multi-sensory tool. Because it can behave in many different, yet controlled ways, it shows children how to assimilate a physical object with abstract thought. This helps develop both their imagination and spatial reasoning. Numbers they once thought were too large to imagine become comprehensible, and they realize that some concepts they may have believed unimportant turn out to be a bit bigger than they thought.

• Development of Child's Long-Term Memory

When children learn the abacus, they learn how to solve a problem. This technique is applied to problems not related to arithmetic. They will know the steps to solve geometry, algebra, and word problems. They will also learn new languages more easily because they remember vocabulary and grammar better.

• Improved Short-Term Memory

Most students' short-term memory is filled with how to solve many different problems. However, with the abacus, these solutions don't need to be memorized because they are already known. This frees up space in short-term memory for other essential items like schedules and important tasks.

• Child's Critical Thinking Ability

Because the abacus is taught through system knowledge, it teaches children to think critically and analytically about a problem. To learn more about how the abacus teaches critical thinking, click here.

• Child's Independence:

When a child learns to solve a problem, their sense of self-confidence grows. They want to try the next problem and the one after that. They want to show you what they did all by themselves. Even if they don't understand the problem or don't get the right answer, the feeling of independence is everything to them. It's how they show themselves they are growing up.

The science backs it up. The abacus is the way forward. The students studied in this research were not high schoolers or college students, but rather elementary school pupils. Can you imagine your 7 or 8-year-old child calculating 10 digits or more in their head, in just seconds? Now is the time to get involved in the greatest advantage in children's education. It's time for your child to learn to master the abacus.