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Deep Dive: The Cognitive Science Behind Abacus Training in Schools
13 Jan 2026
In the abacus that students use to learn mathematics, they don’t just move the beads; they visualise every calculation. At first, children observe the beads moving along rods. Sooner still, they are closing their eyes and “seeing” those beads in their mind’s eye, solving problems without touching the frame. It’s an awesome trick that taps into the brain’s visuospatial sketchpad (the area it uses to hold mental images), making it easy for them to juggle those multi-step calculations. Over time, that mental abacus grows ever more distinct, and something as mundane as a question about addition or subtraction begins to seem less like engaging in the calculations of a complex arithmetic problem and more like remembering a picture.
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