Field experiments for education in cognitive science

Poor children in the developing world are increasingly likely to attend school but often fail to master the elementary school curriculum. In India, most primary school graduates cannot pass simple math and reading taught in the first two grades, and even seventh graders may perform arithmetic only by counting tallies. Professor Duflo and her team will work with students in India, testing a suite of games developed by her team that aim to increase children’s readiness for learning school mathematics. The research is unique in its use of games that build on universal, early-emerging concepts of number and geometry that are the subject of intense research in cognitive science.