What you do in Mental Math Master
Listen to a sum read aloud, then answer it. No writing it down: the whole sum lives in your head. A Classic round is 10 questions with three tries each: two by ear, then the sum appears in writing for a last try. If that misses too, the answer is shown and 5 seconds go on your time.
- Echo reads a set of easy sums one after another, then you type the answers back in order. The first set has 2 sums, and each set you clear adds one, up to 9.
- Listen back replays every question with its answer and, after a miss, names the likely slip, such as 15 heard as 50 or the digits the wrong way round.
- Easy is free, and Medium and Hard open after clean runs in under 40 seconds. Very Hard, the Quick Echo pace and Custom practice come with Pro.
- In the Android app in English, Say It! (beta) lets you answer out loud.
Try it: 10 seconds
No pressure. Just see how it feels.
seven plus five = ?
Show the answer
12
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Doc explains
Close your eyes and listen! When I read you a sum, there is nothing on the screen to lean on, so a little voice inside your head has to keep repeating the numbers while you work it out. Scientists have been studying that inner voice for about half a century. Nobody has shown that listening practice makes it stronger, mind you, so think of this as a fun way to practise sums by ear.
The science idea
The phonological loop: the short-term store in working memory that holds sounds and words, often described as your inner voice.
In Alan Baddeley's model, working memory is a central executive plus two stores: the phonological loop for sounds and words, and the visuospatial sketchpad for pictures and places. The model was first put forward about 30 years before his 2003 review, and it is still developing.1
Echo adds a second idea, the "span": how many things you can hold and give back. Psychologists measure working memory capacity with span tasks.2
What the research found
Baddeley's review describes working memory as a central executive plus two stores, the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad.1
A review of mental arithmetic research concluded that all three parts of working memory, the inner-voice store included, play a role in sums done in your head, under different conditions.3
Which part does which job is still unsettled. An earlier study suggested that multiplying and taking away lean on different stores. A larger, preregistered study in 2022 tested that idea and found no clear support for it, and noted that earlier follow-ups had been inconsistent.4
Span tasks, such as counting span, operation span and reading span, are widely used measures of working memory capacity, and a methodological review examines how reliable and valid they are.2
How Mental Math Master uses it
- The question is spoken, not shown, so the numbers have to be held in your inner-voice store while you work them out.1
- After two misses by ear, the sum appears in writing for a last try, so a slip of hearing does not end the question.
- Echo asks you to hold several answers and give them back in order, an idea borrowed from the span tasks psychologists use.2
- Listen back names the likely slip, so you can tell a hearing slip (15 or 50?) from a sum slip.
What this does and doesn’t mean
It does mean
- Solving by ear makes your inner voice do the holding, one of the memory systems that sums in your head can use.3
- Echo turns a well-known way of measuring working memory into a climb you can play.
It doesn’t mean
- It does not mean listening practice strengthens your inner voice: the research says the store is used, not that practice makes it bigger.
- Echo looks like a span task, but being measured by a task is not the same as being trained by it. Training gains tend to stay with the trained task or very similar ones.5
- It does not mean particular sums live in particular memory stores: that idea did not hold up in a larger, preregistered test.4
- The studies below tested their own tasks with their own volunteers. They did not test Math Workout.
References
Written in APA 7 style. Tap a number in the text to jump here, and the arrow to jump back.
- 1
Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory: Looking back and looking forward. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(10), 829-839. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1201
- 2
Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., Bunting, M. F., Hambrick, D. Z., Wilhelm, O., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user's guide. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(5), 769-786. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196772
- 3
DeStefano, D., & LeFevre, J.-A. (2004). The role of working memory in mental arithmetic. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 16(3), 353-386. https://doi.org/10.1080/09541440244000328
- 4
Chen, E. H., Bailey, D. H., & Jaeggi, S. M. (2022). No clear support for differential influences of visuospatial and phonological resources on mental arithmetic: A Registered Report. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 8(2), 259-280. https://doi.org/10.5964/jnc.8421 Free to read
- 5
Melby-Lervåg, M., Redick, T. S., & Hulme, C. (2016). Working memory training does not improve performance on measures of intelligence or other measures of "far transfer": Evidence from a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 512-534. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616635612 Free to read
Science last checked: 2026-11-05
