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…

Whole-number arithmetic is a core content area of primary mathematics, which lays the foundation for children's later conceptual development. This paper focuses on teaching whole-number multiplication (WNM) to build a stepping stone for children's proportional reasoning. Our intention in writing this paper is to obtain a practice-based perspective…