This study examines the solutions of 34 kindergarten children as they create equal groups from n bottle caps, where n was equal to 8, 9, 22, and 23. For each n, children were asked to find as many different solutions as possible. The number of solutions they found, i.e., children's fluency, as well as the strategies used to create equal groups,…

The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of how preschool teachers can use representations of different kinds to bring fore the mathematical content that may be afforded in pictures and narrative designed for numerical learning purposes. Seventy-three video documentations of reading sessions with 27 toddlers (1-3 years of age) over the…

As students develop understanding and fluency in single-digit operations such as addition, they develop sophisticated strategies and number sense (magnitude, number order, and composition). Deficits in number sense and reliance on inefficient approaches can lead to struggle in mathematics. Intervention research in this area reported effects on…

Many studies have used fraction magnitude comparison tasks to assess people's abilities to quickly assess fraction magnitudes. However, since there are multiple ways to compare fractions, it is not clear whether people actually reason about the holistic magnitudes of the fractions in this task and whether they use multiple strategies in a flexible…

Being able to perform computational estimations efficiently is an important skill. Furthermore, computational estimation experiments are used to study general principles in strategy development. Rounding strategies are common in computational estimation. However, little is known about whether and when children use a mixed-rounding strategy (i.e.,…

In Asia, some children are taught a calculation technique known as the 'mental abacus'. Previous research indicated that mental abacus experts can perform extraordinary feats of mental arithmetic, but it disagrees as to whether the technique improves working memory. The present study extended and clarified these findings by contrasting performance…

To explain children's difficulties learning fraction arithmetic, Braithwaite et al. (2017) proposed FARRA, a theory of fraction arithmetic implemented as a computational model. The present study tested predictions of the theory in a new domain, decimal arithmetic, and investigated children's use of conceptual knowledge in that domain. Sixth and…

Prior work exploring preschool-aged children's reasoning with repeating patterns has shown that patterning ability is an important predictor of math achievement; however, there is limited research exploring older children's growing pattern task performance. The current study tested whether presentation format impacts performance on growing pattern…

Many studies in the past decades have focused on low and typical mathematics achievers, yet little is known about children with high mathematics achievement, particularly at a young age. The current study aimed to fill this gap and started from the early work of Krutetskii (1976) as a theoretical lens to study the characteristics of high…