• Problem-size effect in 6 and 1...

*Result*: Problem-size effect in 6 and 12-year-old children: from counting to memory retrieval.

Title:
Problem-size effect in 6 and 12-year-old children: from counting to memory retrieval.
Authors:
Andras F; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain; Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Granada, Spain. Electronic address: andrasfilip@ugr.es., Macizo P; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain; Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Granada, Spain.
Source:
Journal of experimental child psychology [J Exp Child Psychol] 2026 Feb; Vol. 262, pp. 106394. Date of Electronic Publication: 2025 Oct 25.
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Language:
English
Journal Info:
Publisher: Academic Press Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 2985128R Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1096-0457 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00220965 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Exp Child Psychol Subsets: MEDLINE
Imprint Name(s):
Publication: New York, NY : Academic Press
Original Publication: New York.
MeSH Terms:
Mental Recall*/physiology , Problem Solving*/physiology , Child Development*/physiology , Mathematics*, Humans ; Child ; Female ; Male
Contributed Indexing:
Keywords: Automatized counting; Memory retrieval; Mental arithmetic; Problem-size effect
Entry Date(s):
Date Created: 20251114 Date Completed: 20251114 Latest Revision: 20251114
Update Code:
20260130
DOI:
10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106394
PMID:
41236004
Database:
MEDLINE

*Further Information*

*Currently, there is a heated debate regarding the cognitive processes involved in solving single-digit addition problems and their inherent problem-size effect. The problem-size effect corresponds to an increase in the solution times as the size of the operands increases, and two theoretical accounts (memory retrieval and automatized counting) have been proposed to explain this effect. In the present study, we investigated the developmental changes behind the problem-size effect to pit these accounts against each other. To do so, 61 first-grade and sixth-grade children solved single-digit addition problems (with operands ranging from 0 to 9), and we scrutinized the problem-size effect within both tie and non-tie problems. We observed that tie problems presented a problem-size effect in first-grade children and this effect disappeared by the sixth grade. This is consistent with recent observations showing a developmental shift from counting to direct memory retrieval for small tie problems (Bagnoud et al., 2021), and we extend these findings by showing that this shift occurs at different speed for large ties. In contrast, non-tie problems always presented a problem-size effect in the first-grade children and critically in the sixth-grade children. This is inconsistent with the automatized counting theory (Uittenhove et al., 2016), which proposes different cognitive mechanisms for very-small and medium-small non-tie problems. Conversely, our data are better accommodated by the memory retrieval accounts (e.g., Campbell, 1995), which posit that small non-tie additions are initially solved by algorithmic procedures, but later transition to be solved by direct memory retrieval.
(Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)*

*Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.*