Children's failure to reason often leads to their mathematical performance being shaped by spurious associations from problem input and overgeneralization of inapplicable procedures rather than by whether answers and procedures make sense. In particular, imbalanced distributions of problems, particularly in textbooks, lead children to create…

Described in the context of a computer simulation are highlights of a program of research focusing on the storage of mathematics problem solving information in young children's memory and the development of such knowledge structures in older children. Specifically discussed are the problem size effect, the network nature of the memory…

Proposes a theory of cognitive processes in doing and learning place value arithmetic. Discusses a computer model that simulates the learning of multicolumn subtraction under one-on-one tutoring to measure the relative difficulty of two methods of subtraction. The model predicts that regrouping is more difficult to learn than an alternative…