Building Models with Lego and Improving Math Skills

Memory has many dimensions—including working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory and others. For example, if you were assigned to a group in class as part of some exercise and given a group number, you will use your short-term memory to remember that number throughout the exercise, and then likely forget that bit of knowledge within a minute after the exercise has ended. Likewise, if someone gives you a phone number you need to call only once, you likely will dial it and then forget it when it is no longer needed.

On the other hand, long-term memory allows you to preserve knowledge for a few minutes or for the rest of your life. You will always remember your name, for example.

Short-term memory is sometimes divided into verbal memory—which allows you to hear and remember information in words—and visuospatial memory, which allows you to see and remember information about forms, colors, and places. Verbal working memory, for example, allows you to recall a full sentence. Visuospatial working memory gives you the ability to use your verbal or visuospatial short-term memory to do things like remember directions laid out on a map.

Memory is one of many factors that can affect an individual’s math abilities and can play a role in many activities—such as construction play—that may promote the development of math expertise.

By examining students’ verbal short-term memory and working memory, together with their visuospatial short-term memory and working memory, general intelligence, arithmetic skills, and reading skills, we can, for example, understand the association between math abilities and construction play, which includes activities like building LEGO® models and using sand, wooden blocks, and other similar toys and tools to make something.

Can we determine whether and how making Lego models is connected to learning math?

Let’s begin by measuring math and reading skills using a normal standardized test. This involves assessing basic multiplication, division, addition and subtraction skills with progressively harder questions.

We can then carry out a second test to assess the four different types of memory. By reading a list of numbers and asking pupils to repeat them, you can evaluate individuals’ verbal short-term memory. Tests for verbal working memory involve reading a set of statements to students and having them choose whether or not each one is true before having them repeat the final word of each sentence. Then we can assess students’ short-term visual memory by placing dots on a grid and asking pupils to indicate where each dot is in the order that it occurred. Visual working memory is examined by displaying a list of sets of three shapes, one of which is distinctive from the other two in each set, and then asking students to identify the distinct shape and recall where it was located.

During all of these tests, the test subjects are to be moved on to the next level after four or more correct answers. The test is stopped if they get three incorrect. Once the tests are complete, we can use a technique known as correlation analysis to see if the variables (Lego building, memory, IQ, and reading) are connected to arithmetic and reading abilities.

Analysis of correlation looks to see if children who performed well on the variables also performed well in math or reading. The first query, as to which brain functions are engaged in math, is answered via correlation analysis. We employed mediation analysis to address the second query, which was, "How is Lego construction connected to math?"

Mediation analysis is a statistical method used to evaluate evidence from studies designed to test hypotheses about how some causal antecedent variable X transmits its effect on a consequent variable Y.

We discovered connections between math proficiency and reading proficiency, Lego building, general intelligence, and visuospatial memory. It's interesting to see that verbal memory and arithmetic abilities were unrelated. Reading abilities were only connected to math skills when we compared them to math skills and reading skills to verbal working memory. Hence, we can tell that the relationship between Legos and math skills is not because of general knowledge. Visuospatial memory, however, plays a huge role.