Video Transcript: Mathematics

[opens on a fourth grade student, Dmitri, being interviewed by Dr. Levine]
Dr. Mel Levine: What's hard about math?

Dmitri: Multiplication and division and just those kind of things, like really big numbers on a page. It just take-takes me days to figure it out.

[cut to Dr. Levine]
Dr. Levine: Do you forget a lot of things in math?

[cut to Dmitri]
Dmitri: Yeah. I learn my multiplication in a day. Or I memorize them for two weeks, and I just forgot 'em.

[cut to writing sample]

[cut to Dr. Levine]
Dr. Levine: There's factual memory: your ability to recall facts quickly and easily, such as multiplication facts or addition facts. There's procedural memory, which is your memory for how to do things: how to do long division, how to reduce a fraction, those would all be called procedural memory. And math has this incredible way of combining factual memory with procedural memory during problem solving.

Dr. Levine: Do you get confused in math? [cut to a another third grade student, Mary Sarah, in interview]

Mary Sarah: Yeah, some things that you don't, that you don't know for sure, you just get all mixed up. It's like your brain stopped. It's really hard to keep on going.

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