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Studies have shown that numerosity‐based arithmetic training can promote arithmetic learning in typically developing children as well as children with developmental dyscalculia (DD), but the cognitive mechanism underlying this training effect remains unclear. The main aim of the current study was to examine the role of visual form perception in arithmetic improvement through an 8‐day numerosity training for DD children. Eighty DD children were selected from four Chinese primary schools. They were randomly divided into the intervention and control groups. The intervention group received training on an apple‐collecting game, whereas the control group received an English dictation task. Children's cognitive and arithmetic performances were assessed before and after training. The results showed that the intervention group showed a significant improvement in arithmetic performance, approximate number system (ANS) acuity, and visual form perception, but not in spatial processing and sentence comprehension. The control group showed no significant improvement in any cognitive ability. Mediation analysis further showed that training‐related improvement in arithmetic performance was fully mediated by the improvement in visual form perception. The results suggest that short‐term numerosity training enhances the arithmetic performance of DD children by improving their visual form perception.

There has been a long-standing debate on situational and symbolic mathematics, which is associated with how to design and execute mathematics education for all students.Brain studies can give some clues for how to deal with the debate. There are situational, verbalized, and visuospatial brain networks and the connectivity among the networks, which suggest the representation of mathematical knowledge should be situational, verbalized, and symbolic. Moreover, the representation should be mapped onto one another. Previous studies have shown the importance of situational and verbalized mathematics, but they are typically treated as preliminary and auxiliary introductions for formal symbolic mathematics. Each of the three mathematics types and their mapping would be the core learning goal in mathematics education.

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