REASONING AND INFORMATION PROCESSING IN CHILDREN'S MATHEMATICAL ACHIEVEMENT

We report a large scale longitudinal study of the effects of (1) children's ability to reason about mathematical relations and (2) their information processing abilities when they were 8-9 years old on their mathematical achievement at school several years later. Their reasoning and information processing scores both made independent contributions to their mathematical achievement at ages 11- (N=2590) and 13-years (N=1680), but the predictive power of their reasoning was the stronger of the two. Children's ability to reason mathematically, therefore, plays a key role in their mathematical success, but their information processing abilities also have an important effect.