Freshman class

Numbers games

Elida Laski, assistant professor of counseling, developmental, and educational psychology

PhD, Carnegie Mellon University

Representative publication: "Is 27 a Big Number? Correlational and Casual Connections Among Numerical Categorization, Number Line Estimation, and Numerical Magnitude Comparison" (with R.S. Siegler), Child Developoment, 78 (2007)

As an elementary school teacher, I was especially interested in helping children overcome misconceptions and errors in mathematics. This led to my broad interest in how children gain academic knowledge and the application of cognitive-developmental theory to educational practice.

I am currently studying factors affecting students' acquisition of numerical knowledge. I found, for example, that different procedures in playing a number board game, akin to Chutes-and-Ladders, led to significant differences in understanding numerical magnitude, counting, and numeral identification. The basic premise of this work is that better alignment among teaching materials, instructional procedures, and the desired cognitive representations, leads to greater and more robust learning.