Children's strategy use in computational estimation

Patrick Lemaire, Mireille Lecacheur, Fernand Farioli
2000 Canadian journal of experimental psychology  
This study reports an investigation of ten-year-old children's strategy use in computational estimation (i.e., give an approximate answer like 400 to an arithmetic problem like 224 + 213). Children used four strategies: rounding with decomposition, rounding without decomposition, truncation, and compensation. Strategies appeared to differ in frequency and effectiveness. Finally, children chose strategies in an adaptive way so as to obtain fast and accurate performance. Implications of these
more » ... ings for understanding children's computational estimation performance and strategies in numerical cognition in general are discussed.
doi:10.1037/h0087336 fatcat:zrprz2hzcbeylcmpc2cl6sgbc4