Comment by thoughtship on The Bat and Ball Problem Revisited · 2023-03-22T00:32:33.267Z · LW · GW

So perhaps the girl you were teaching was a member of the cognitive-decoupling elite you wrote about? 
The problems you are explaining in that article are reversed in the early years of school math. That is, a strong use of tangibles to explain concepts.

She's encumbered with all the tangible objects preventing her from answering the conceptual question.
In later years she'll be freed from tangible objects obscuring the real problem. Math will likely be more intuitive for her and she'll start to soar. And it's at just that point where the rest of us start to flounder..

I wonder if this concept has been discussed from a learning and pedagogy perspective. Seeking to tailor technical subjects to different types of thinkers?