At the heart of the debate about the place of standard arithmetic algorithms is the practice of teaching subtraction through decomposition. One welcome feature of the national numeracy strategy in both its initial and current incarnations has been the introduction of a focus upon a variety of mental strategies supported by jottings. In this…

Mathematical computation consists of both written computation and mental computation. The strategies for mental computation can be used to check the reasonableness of written computations. Mental computation has two distinguishing characteristics: "it produces an exact answer, and the procedure is performed mentally, without using external…

Meta-analyses are presented of sex differences in (1) the (mental) arithmetic subtest of the Wechsler intelligence tests for children and adolescents (the WISC and WPPSI tests), showing that boys obtained a mean advantage of 0.11d; (2) the (mental) arithmetic subtest of the Wechsler intelligence tests for adults (the WAIS tests) showing a mean…

The present study was carried out to examine physiological arousal modulation (heart activity and skin conductance), across baseline and cognitive tasks, in females with fragile X or Turner syndrome and a comparison group of females with neither syndrome. Relative to the comparison group, for whom a greater increase in skin conductance was…

Introduction: For decades birth order and gender differences have attracted research attention. Method: Birth order, family size and gender, and the relationship with arithmetic achievement is studied among 1152 elementary school children (540 girls, 612 boys) in Flanders. Children were matched on socioeconomic status of the parents and…

Sixty-four adults participated in a study examining the accuracy of metacognitive judgments during 28 hr of sleep deprivation (SD) and continuous cognitive work. Three tasks were studied (perceptual comparison, general knowledge, and mental addition), collectively spanning a range of cognitive abilities and levels of susceptibility to SD.…

The study investigated the mental models of primary school children related to the day/night cycle. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with 40 fourth-grade and 40 sixth-grade children. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the majority of the children were classified as having geocentric models. The results also…

Recent international studies have highlighted the success of students from Hong Kong in mathematics and problem-solving, and have begun to suggest some of the factors associated with this success. Other studies have suggested that Hong Kong students are averse to risk-taking, favouring memorisation and imitation in their solution strategies. Year…

To date, few studies have investigated the evolution of problem solving and general numeracy abilities during adulthood: skills that have obvious social importance. In this research, evolutions in adults' mental arithmetic skills were investigated using data from the IVQ 2004 French national survey, which tested 9,185 adults aged between 18 and…

In 4 experiments, the authors examined the use of the hands in simple arithmetic tasks. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that pointing increases both accuracy and speed in counting arrays of items, whether those items are identical or distinctive. Experiment 3 demonstrated that individuals tend to nod their heads when not allowed to point and that…

Passive and active visuospatial working memory (VSWM) were investigated in relation to maths performance. The mental rotation task was employed as a measure of active VSWM whereas passive VSWM was investigated using a modified Corsi Blocks task and a matrix pattern task. The Raven Progressive Matrices Test measured fluid intelligence. A total of…

The adaptive use of approximate calculation was examined using a verification task with 18 third graders with mathematics learning disabilities, 22 typically achieving third graders, and 21 typically achieving second graders. Participants were asked to make true-false decisions on simple and complex addition problems while the distance between the…

Mental computation helps children understand how numbers work, how to make decisions about procedures, and how to create different strategies to solve math problems. Although researchers agree on the importance of mental computation skills, they debate how to help students develop these skills. The present study explored the existing literature in…

Research has established that children's development of addition and subtraction skills progresses through a hierarchy of strategies that begin with counting-by-one methods through to flexible mental strategies using a combination of knowledge of basic facts and understanding of place value. An important transition point is the shift from the…

This study examines the mental computation strategies used by pupils at the end of primary school. In 1998 a new strategy for teaching mathematics was introduced into British schools (the National Numeracy Strategy) that specifically focused on mental calculation. The first part of the study took place in 1999, one year after the implementation of…