Working in Movement

Infant Movement and Asperger's touched on a study that linked observed infant movement developmental processes with later difficulties. Another new bit of research suggests that storytelling ability at age 3 or 4 might correlate with mathematical ability two years later. Storytelling and Mathematical Ability Linked briefly describes the research done at the University of Waterloo, involving 41 kids.

The kids were shown a picture book and encouraged to tell a puppet a story to accompany the pictures. Some of the kids were able to link up the events in the pictures and describe them from the points of view of the different characters involved, and some weren't. Returning to the research lab two years later, the kids were given tests to measure various academic abilities. It turns out that the kids who were best at storytelling also scored highest in mathematical ability.

It's tempting to interpret this as something like "you gotta be good with words before you can be good with numbers." But it suggests to me a facility with seeing context and being able to express it are useful skills to build upon.

It would be interesting to take a cue from the Asperger's study and go back earlier to look at the developmental processes of the kids to see if there any significant differences between the kids who told a good story and those who didn't. The ones who didn't, of course, would have to work on reality television shows instead of dramas!