Marcia A Barnes
Vanderbilt University, TN·Education Research
Many children struggle with math in ways that persist for years, and the standard response is to teach the missing skills directly. For roughly a quarter to nearly half of students with learning disabilities, that is not enough.
- Fields
Education Research
Psychology
- Topics
math learning disabilities
working memory
cognitive training
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Test whether adding coordinated computerized working memory training to standard direct skills math instruction improves word-problem solving, arithmetic, and working memory beyond math instruction alone, in a randomized trial with first graders who have math delays and low working memory.
- Compare the combined treatment against both a contrast condition receiving equal-time computer activities unrelated to math or working memory and a control group receiving only the conventional school program, at posttest and delayed posttest.
- Test the cognitive-academic mutualism mechanism by assessing whether bidirectional relations between working memory and math mediate treatment effects on delayed math and working memory outcomes, and whether those relations are stronger in the combined condition.
- Explore the durability and robustness of effects through one-year follow-up assessments and exploratory subgroup analyses of children's response to treatment.
More about the research
This project asks whether pairing direct math instruction with training of a basic mental capacity can do better. The guiding idea is cognitive-academic mutualism: thinking capacities support learning school subjects, and practicing school subjects in turn strengthens those capacities, so the two should be trained together rather than separately.
Why it matters
Math learning disabilities are common and carry long-term consequences in school, employment, and daily life, yet direct skills instruction leaves a substantial share of affected children behind. By testing a coordinated cognitive-plus-academic treatment and the mechanism behind it, the trial could supply clinicians and schools with an additional option for children who do not respond to conventional instruction, and could inform treatment design for other learning disabilities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Geary
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Psychology
Track the longitudinal development of core number knowledge, such as cardinality and counting, in preschoolers to identify early signs of school math readiness and math learning disability risk.
Christina Barbieri
University of Delaware, DE·Education Research
Compile a database of math learning and outcome data from successful interventions in grades 4–10, covering more than 3,500 students and 700,000 work samples with detailed accuracy and strategy-error records.
Geetha Ramani
University of Maryland, MD·Education Research
Test whether three-month home-based trainings on math communication, with and without gestures, increase the math talk and gestures used by parents and their preschool-age children during play.
The school
Vanderbilt University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 494 research doctorates a year.
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