Cognitive Addition: Comparison of Learning Disabled and Academically Normal Children

Simplo .ddition problems were presented using a true-false RT verification paradigm to 77 academically normal and 46 learning disabled (LD) subjects in the second, fourth, or sixth grade. This informationprocessing paradigm was used to determine the process deficits associated with a learning disability in mathematics achievement. Regression models indicated that the majority of normal and LD second grade subjects used an implicit counting strategy for problem 0 solution. However, LD subjects required a greater amount of time to execute this algorithm and appeared to be deficient in the ability to self-monitor the problem solving process. A shift from reliance on the counting strategy to a memory retrieval process from the second to sixth grade was evident for normal subjects. No such shift was evident fur LD subjects, as the majority of these subjects relied on the counting strategy throughout the elementary school