The UBC Early Development Research Group (EDRG) will host their latest Wonder Kids talk with associate professor and developmental psychologist Darko Odic (PhD) on May 29. The webinar will explore the fascinating world of numbers and math concepts that infants can understand.

Odic has always been passionate in revealing through research the way that infants and children are far more capable and ingenious than typically given credit. This quandary guided the way for his doctoral work at John Hopkins University and later his research with the EDRG.

“I’ve always been drawn to the question of how to reconcile the ways that kids are so incredibly smart at figuring out many aspects of the world and yet at the same time seem to struggle with relatively rudimentary things. A lot of my research has been trying to solve this puzzle,” he says.

The Wonder Kids talk provides a great medium to illustrate the extent to which children have an impressively robust understanding of numbers. It is a project that seeks to increase the information parents have on the research being done in early development at UBC, and open up communication between psychologists and the greater community.

Putting two and two together

Odic hopes that his talk dispels the myth that children are blank slates when starting their math curricula but instead have an already innate sense of number.

“We often see math as a difficult concept, something that kids walk into the classroom not knowing anything about, and have to begin from scratch,” Odic explains. “However, research is telling us that even before children and preschoolers have learned anything about mathematics formally, they already have an incredibly rich intuition about what math and numbers are.”

The webinar will further examine this idea through a combination of interactive activities and a discussion of developmental studies and research. Odic will explore burgeoning questions and topics associated with the basic sense of numbers, such as how it can lead to children understanding mathematical operations.

“Studies demonstrate that young kids can intuitively add and subtract. This can be seen for example when they are doing sharing behaviour. Many of us who have interacted with kids have seen them doing sharing behaviour, such as the concept one for you and one for me. They are also very sensitive to the fact when something is not being shared properly,” states Odic.

The most recent research reveals the startling idea that kids can understand multiplication and division at an early age, a topic that Odic is also exploring in his own lab.

“We use the concept of growing to demonstrate intuitive multiplication and division. For example, kids have a very reinforced sense that if you eat you will grow,” he says, clarifying the way children can exhibit comprehension of seemingly difficult mathematical concepts.

Odic explains that, in his lab, participants are shown movies in which an amorphous blob eats a little magic bean and grows by a particular amount. Different beans make these blobs grow by different amounts – doubling, tripling or quadrupling.

“What is interesting is that after kids see this for a while they can then surmise and draw if the blob were to eat this yellow bean, it is going to grow two times bigger, or if they eat the green one, it will grow three times as large,” he says. “This is the way that we can capitalize on more intuitive tasks to showcase this idea of multiplication for example.”

Bridging the numbers gap

One question still remains: if children have this understanding of numbers, then why is math so hard? Odic will delve into this puzzle through his webinar, to understand the breakdown between formal learning and the innate sense.

He offers a recommendation to parents who want to bridge this disconnect. When teaching math curricula less emphasis should be placed on rote steps and right answers, and more on enriching understanding.

“Have kids approach mathematics as a form of play and encourage predictions,” suggests Odic. “Find opportunities in daily life to gently drive their attention towards paying attention to numbers. For example, going to the park and asking them if they see more people or more trees. As long as kids are engaging in the process of thinking of these mathematical operations, they can later start understanding it on a conceptual and formal level at school.”

For more information, please visit: www.edrg.psych.ubc.ca/events