Acquisition of new arithmetic skills based on prior arithmetic skills: A cross-sectional study in primary school from...

In several countries, children's math skills have been declining at an alarming rate in recent years and decades, and one of the explanations for this alarming situation is that children have difficulties in establishing the relations between arithmetical operations.

In order to address this question, our goal was to determine the predictive power of previously taught operations on newly taught ones above general cognitive skills and basic numerical skills.

More than one hundred children in each school level from Grades 2 to 5 from various socio-cultural environments (N = 435, 229 girls) were tested.

Children were assessed on their abilities to solve the four basic arithmetic operations. They were also tested on their general cognitive abilities, including working memory, executive functions (i.e., inhibition and flexibility), visual attention and language. Finally, their basic numerical skills were measured through a matching task between symbolic and nonsymbolic numerosity representations. Additions and subtractions were presented to children from Grade 2, multiplications from Grade 3 and divisions from Grade 4.

We show that addition predicts subtraction and multiplication performance in all grades. Moreover, multiplication predicts division performance in both Grades 4 and 5. Finally, addition predicts division in Grade 4 but not in Grade 5 and subtraction and division are not related whatever the school grade. These results are examined considering the existing literature, and their implications in terms of instruction are discussed.