Central elements of adaptive expertise in arithmetic problem solving are flexibility, using multiple strategies, and adaptivity, selecting the optimal strategy. Research shows that the strategies children actually use do not fully reflect the strategies they know: there is hidden potential. In the current study a sample of 147 third graders from…

People frequently encounter numeric information in medical and health contexts. In this paper, we investigated the math factors that are associated with decision-making accuracy in health and non-health contexts. This is an important endeavor given that there is relatively little cross-talk between math cognition researchers and those studying…

Algebraic thinking and strategy flexibility are essential to advanced mathematical thinking. Early algebra instruction uses 'missing-operand' problems (e.g., x - 7 = 2) solvable via two typical strategies: (1) direct retrieval of arithmetic facts (e.g., 9 - 7 = 2) and (2) performance of the inverse operation (e.g., 2 + 7 = 9). The current study…

We investigated how the updating function supports the integration process in solving arithmetic word problems. In Experiment 1, we measured reading time, that is, translation and integration times, when undergraduate and graduate students (n = 78) were asked to solve 2 types of problems: those containing only necessary information and those…