Emergence of Information-Retrieval Strategies in Numerical Cognition: A Developmental Study

• Published in: Cognition and instruction Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 127 - 150
• Main Authors: Kaye, Daniel B., Post, Tim A., Hall, Vernon C., Dineen, John T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hillsdale, N.J Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc 1986; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Subjects: Addition; Adults; Children; Cognition; Cognitive models; Grade 2; Grade 3; Memory; Memory recall; Modeling
• ISSN: 0737-0008; 1532-690X
• DOI: 10.1207/s1532690xci0302_3

A series of simple addition problems was presented in a reaction time, true-false verification task to subjects in Grades 2 through 4 and in college. This information-processing paradigm was used to measure the solution strategies used for problems that sometimes are solved too rapidly and accurately to allow for meaningful error analysis. A series of structural models representing different processing sequences was tested against reaction times for solution to different two-term addition problems. Young children and adults alike used a memory access process to solve highly overlearned addition problems such as 1 + 1 = 2, but solution strategies of more difficult problems differed by age. Younger children adopted a slow, effortful, implicit counting strategy, with efficiency developing in the middle elementary school years; adults performed in a manner consistent with at least some models of memory retrieval found in the literature. Children were classified into two groups, independently of grade, based on slope values from a regression equation computed on individual subject data. The two groups comprised what appeared to be "fast" and "slow" processors, who differed in terms of speed of processing as well as strategy used. Our findings are discussed in terms of models of semantic memory and the development of automatic information-processing skills.