For young children, finger-counting a stepping stone to higher math skills

(Press-News.org) Children who count on their fingers between ages 4 and 6 1/2 have better addition skills by age 7 than those who don’t use their fingers, suggesting that finger counting is an important stepping stone to higher math skills, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

“Finger counting is not just a tool for immediate success in young children, but a way to support the development of advanced abstract arithmetic skills,” said lead author Catherine Thevenot, PhD, of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Finger counting is widely used by young children as a strategy to solve math problems. However, many elementary school teachers expect children to move on from finger counting at a very young age. One French study found that 30% of first grade teachers view it as a sign that a child is struggling to understand numerical concepts. 

Previous research generally only assessed children at one point in time and found that children who use their fingers to count perform better in arithmetic than those who don’t -- until about age 7. After age 7, however, the relationship reverses and children who don’t use their fingers perform better than those who do. What remained unclear, however, was whether the non-finger users at age 7 had never used their fingers, or whether they were “former finger users” who had moved on from the practice. 

“Our study aimed to clarify this distinction and to better understand what finger use, or its absence, truly reveals about children’s arithmetic development,” Thevenot said.

To do so, she and her colleague Marie Krenger, PhD, followed 211 Swiss children from ages 4 ½ to 7 ½ (pre-K to second grade) to assess how their finger-counting strategies changed over time and how they related to mathematical skill. Twice a year, the researchers asked the children to answer up to three sets of addition problems of increasing difficulty: adding two digits between 1 and 5, adding one digit between 1 and 5 to another between 6 and 9, and adding two digits between 6 and 9. At each test, the researchers only moved on to the next level of difficulty if the child was able to answer 80% of the previous set correctly.

The researchers videotaped the children and observed whether they used their fingers during the addition tasks. Overall, they found that finger counting peaked around age 5 ½ to 6. Up to age 5, more children added without their fingers than with them. However, by age 6 ½, 92% of kids had used their fingers during at least one testing point. By age 7 ½, 43% of children were “ex-finger counters” – they had used their fingers during at least one test but no longer did – while 50% were current finger counters and only 7% had never counted on their fingers.

Overall, the researchers found that the highest-performing children were those who had used their fingers in the past but no longer relied on them. From age 6 on, these former finger users outperformed both children who had never used their fingers and those who still used them. 

“This has important implications, as it shows that there is no reason to discourage children in school from using their fingers to solve arithmetic problems on the grounds that this strategy could prevent them from shifting to faster, internalized procedures once the numbers become too large to be represented on fingers,” Thevenot said. “This research supports encouraging children to use their fingers in arithmetic without fear that they will become stuck in limited strategies.”

Article: “The Role of Children’s Finger Counting History on their Addition Skills,” by Marie Krenger, PhD, University of Lausanne, and Catherine Thevenot, PhD, University of Lausanne. Developmental Psychology, published online Nov. 20, 2025. 
 
CONTACT: Catherine Thevenot, PhD, can be reached at catherine.thevenot@unil.ch. 

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA’s membership includes  173,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve lives.

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