Pathways to arithmetic fact retrieval and percentage calculation in adolescents

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Mathematical skills are crucial for societal function.
• Understanding cognitive mechanisms of early number and math acquisition is vital.
• Adolescent cognitive development in mathematics requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the pathways to mathematics model for adolescent cognitive mechanisms.
• To investigate the independent contributions of three pathways to symbolic-number skills.
• To determine how pathway contributions to formal mathematics vary with task complexity.

Main Methods:

• Study involved 114 adolescents (mean age 14.60 years).
• Assessed cognitive abilities including working memory and three specific pathways.
• Structural equation path analysis was employed to analyze data.

Main Results:

• Symbolic-number comparison was influenced by linguistic, quantitative pathways, and processing speed.
• Arithmetic fact retrieval was predicted by linguistic and quantitative pathways, and symbolic-number comparison.
• Percentage calculation relied on linguistic pathways, working memory, visual analogies, and symbolic-number comparison.

Conclusions:

• Cognitive mechanisms for arithmetic and percentage calculation show similarities and differences in adolescents.
• Linguistic pathways remain important for adolescent symbolic-number processing and calculations.
• Quantitative pathway reliance varies by task, while spatial pathway reliance diminishes.