https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191223122824.htm

From the age of 6 or 7, schoolchildren are confronted with mathematical problems involving additions and subtractions. Instinctively, they use mental simulations of the situations described by the problems in order to come up with solutions. But as soon as a problem becomes complex, recourse to this representation using imagery becomes impossible or leads the student into error. "We reflected on a method that would enable them to detach themselves from these initial representations and that would foster the use of abstract principles of arithmetic," explains Katarina Gvozdic, a researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and Education (FPSE) at UNIGE. This approach, based on semantic re-encoding, spurs students to achieve knowledge in arithmetic at an early age. It was put into practice by teachers in a primary school arithmetic course called ACE-ArithmEcole that substituted the standard arithmetic curriculum.

So that intuitive mental representations will give way to mathematical representations