Determining How Effective Tangrams are as a Tool For Memory Retention and Attention in Pre-School Students
Author : Manya Khemka
The British School, New Delhi, India
Abstract
In our developing world, lack of attention span and the inability to retain information stand as leading symptoms of many learning disabilities in toddlers (such as ADHD and dyslexia). Until now, efforts to improve these skills among toddlers even without these learning disabilities have been limited. Here we report the results of assigning structured tasks to toddlers and the impact organisation has on their memory and attention span. Moreover, the structured tasks assigned to them include self-designed tangrams of different difficult levels; by the usage of different shapes, sizes and colours; in order to record results for improvements in these two important skills over a span of four weeks. The three variables of measurements included average time taken by toddlers to complete the tangrams, the average number of attempts taken by the toddlers to finish the tangram and lastly the average figures plotted by the toddlers. With each week, the difficulty of the tangrams increased and on average, with each passing week, average time taken by toddlers to complete the tangrams decreased, the average number of attempts taken by the toddlers to finish the tangram decreased while the average figures plotted by the toddlers increased.