Elementary Subtraction

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition Vol. 29; no. 6; pp. 1339 - 1352
• Main Authors: Seyler, Donald J, Kirk, Elizabeth P, Ashcraft, Mark H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01.11.2003
• Subjects: Adult; Association Learning; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition & reasoning; Cognition. Intelligence; Errors; Experiments; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Male; Mathematics; Mental Recall; Problem Solving; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Reasoning. Problem solving; Reference Values; Short Term Memory; Test Anxiety Scale; Verbal Behavior; Human; Subtraction; Interindividual comparison; Concurrent task; Cognition; Mathematics; Memory span; Working memory; Experimental study
• ISSN: 0278-7393; 1939-1285
• DOI: 10.1037/0278-7393.29.6.1339

Four experiments examined performance on the 100 "basic facts" of subtraction and found a discontinuous "stair step" function for reaction times and errors beginning with 11 - n facts. Participants' immediate retrospective reports of nonretrieval showed the same pattern in Experiment 3. The degree to which elementary subtraction depends on working memory (WM) was examined in a dual-task paradigm in Experiment 4. The reconstructive processing used with larger basic facts was strongly associated with greater WM disruption, as evidenced by errors in the secondary task; this was especially the case for participants with lower WM spans. The results support the R. S. Siegler and E. Jenkins (1989) distribution of associations model, although discriminating among the alternative solution processes appears to be a serious challenge.