“...brain researchers know that we “see” a representation of our fingers in our brains, even when we do not use fingers in a calculation. The researchers found that when 8-to-13-year-olds were given complex subtraction problems, the somatosensory finger area lit up, even though the students did not use their fingers.

April 13, 2016

The Atlantic

Why Kids Should Use Their Fingers in Math Class

“results support the importance of fine-grained finger representation in arithmetical skill and are the first neurological evidence for a functional role of the somatosensory finger area in proficient arithmetical problem solving, in particular for those problems requiring quantity manipulation. ”

March 16, 2015

Frontiers in Psychology

Perceiving fingers in single-digit arithmetic problems

“Butterworth (1999) suggested that fingers are important in representing numerosities. Furthermore, scores on a finger gnosis test are a better predictor of numerical performance up to 3 years later than intellectual measures (Marinthe et al., 2001; Noël, 2005).”

January 8, 2008

CORTEX

Does finger training increase young
children’s numerical performance?