Measuring individual differences in children's addition strategy choices

Abstract

A test of individual differences in addition strategy choices was devised and its psychometric properties were analyzed. The test was used to examine how individuals' accuracy of retrieval was related to their use of backup strategies (e.g., counting on fingers) and the accuracy of their backup strategies. Strategy use and errors of 105 6-year-olds was recorded on all 100 single-digit addition problems. Children were randomly assigned to the “exploratory” or the “validation” subsample. In the exploratory subsample, discriminant analyses reduced the 100 items to 2 sets of 20 items: each test discriminated good students, not-so-good students, and perfectionists. In the validation subsample, the 2 forms' reliabilities exceeded .90 on all variables, classified 74% of the children similarly, and showed similar relations to other variables. Not-so-good students had lower achievement scores than good students or perfectionists in math computations but not math applications. Children's frequency and accuracy of backup strategy use and backup strategy accuracy functioned independently to reduce their retrieval errors.