Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When solving mathematical equivalence problems (e.g. 5 + 3 + 6 = + 6), children use a variety of problem-solvingstrategies (Perry, Church, & Goldin-Meadow, 1988). We investigated factors potentially influencing how children choosestrategies and solve problems, including the size of the numbers, the problem structure, and the structure of childrensstrategy repertoires. We predicted that childrens strategy choices would be influenced by both the size of the numbersand the problem structure. We found that, contrary to our expectations, childrens strategy choices and their accuracywere not influenced by the size of the numbers in the problem. We also predicted that there would childrens strategyrepertoires would reveal conceptual structure. Children were highly consistent in their strategy choices across problems,and individual strategies showed evidence of varying affinity with one another. Childrens repertoires appear to reflectchildrens emerging understanding of equivalence, providing a potential target for personalizing instruction in mathematicalequivalence.