Mental arithmetic in children with mathematics learning disabilities: the adaptive use of approximate calculation in an addition verification task

The adaptive use of approximate calculation was examined using a verification task with 18 third graders with mathematics learning disabilities, 22 typically achieving third graders, and 21 typically achieving second graders. Participants were asked to make true-false decisions on simple and complex addition problems while the distance between the proposed and the correct answer was manipulated. Both typically achieving groups were sensitive to answer plausibility on simple problems, were faster at rejecting extremely incorrect results than at accepting correct answers on complex addition problems, and showed a reduction of the complexity effect on implausible problems, attesting to the use of approximate calculation. Conversely, children with mathematics disabilities were unaffected by answer plausibility on simple addition problems, processed implausible and correct sums with equal speed on complex problems, and exhibited a smaller reduction of the complexity effect on implausible problems. They also made more errors on implausible problems. Different hypotheses are discussed to account for these results.