This observational study used data from 270 second-grade students to investigate the association between students' strategy use for multidigit addition and subtraction and their mathematics achievement. Based on strategies they used during a mathematics interview, students were classified into the following strategy groups: (a) standard algorithm,…

The relationship between mathematics and spatial reasoning is well established and extensively researched. Certain mathematics content could be deemed explicitly spatial, for example within geometry. However, the link to spatial reasoning extends into other areas of mathematics, such as representations of the number line and reading and…

The present study aims to examine the pedagogical effectiveness of a Chinese mathematical dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system used for teaching mathematics. The mathematical unit 'multiplication and division of time expressions' was taught to 134 fifth-grade students in three types of instruction conditions: the intelligent tutoring system…

Students in a fully online learning environment have limited opportunities to talk about math problem solving. While discourse is an effective pedagogical model, less is known about how it translates to online math learning. We analyzed online platform data from two fully online virtual elementary schools in the United States to address the…

Presents procedures, results, and conclusions of a research study designed to determine whether providing knowledge of results after each response on an arithmetic exercise would result in performance different from that obtained when knowledge of results is provided following completion of the exercise. The subjects were three fourth grade…

Class inclusion problems differing in size of the array and in superordinate class were given to 84 boys and girls in grades 1 through 4 in a first experiment, and 41 boys and girls in grades 3 and 4 in a second experiment. The experiments sought to determine performance variables explaining the developmentally late appearance of class-inclusion…

Two experiments investigated relationships between state anxiety, memory processes, and children's performance on problem-solving tasks. Participants were second and sixth graders in a private elementary school in Redlands, California. In both experiments, subjects responded to three training and eight test problems presented in the introtact…

Young children and college-age adults were read short stories describing a consistent or inconsistent adult response to a child's action and were given additional information that resolved or failed to resolve the inconsistency. Results concerned subjects' abilities to detect and resolve the inconsistency and to repair a comprehension problem in…

Two studies were conducted with 8- and 10-year-old children to examine sources of age and skill differences in verbal analogical reasoning. Discussion focuses on the child's "problem space" for the analogy task and possible differences in task understanding that lead to strategy and process differences in older versus younger and skilled versus…

Reviews evidence that children use diverse cognitive strategies; discusses the adaptive value of using diverse strategies; describes models of strategy choice based on rational calculations; and presents an overview of the distributions of associations model of children's strategy choice. (RH)

In this investigation of group problem solving in small groups, performance on a tower-building task was studied in same-sex triads of 141 third grade children exposed to four instructional conditions, each consisting of three phases of six trials each. Instructional conditions were either determinate (i.e., individualistic or contrient reward…

Three experiments explored the development of formal logical reasoning between Grades 4 and 12 and the role of semantic content in the solution of Wason's (1966) selection task problems. Results suggest that formal logical reasoning is not generally present during the fourth or sixth grades and that formal logical competence becomes available in…

A study of the physical activity or motor responses associated with curiosity, persistence, and problem solving behaviors was undertaken to learn more about the general developmental nature of these behaviors among elementary school children. The sample consisted of 125 children from kindergarten, second, fourth and sixth grade, all of whom…

Second- and sixth-grade boys were paired with a friend or an acquaintance (N=120), and each dyad completed a problem-solving task under cooperative, competitive, or no reward contingencies. Communicative exchange, affective expression, synchrony of task-oriented behavior, and task performance were examined for evidence of purported mutuality in…

Eighty-nine children between four and nine years of age solved mazes varying in the presumed appropriateness of advance or improvisational planning. Results of the study show that children's planning strategies are adapted to circumstances and suggest that older children may be more proficient in this adaptation than are younger children. (RH)