Differences of Addition & Subtraction Strategy Usage between Young Children with High, Medium, and Low Arithmetical Abilities

Addition and subtraction strategies reflect young children’s comprehension and usage of numerical concepts,and were important indexes of developmental level of mathematical cognition and individual difference.This study focused on exploring differences of strategies usage between 5~6-year-old children by individual tests.The results were as follows: There were significant differences of strategy usage between 5~6-year-old children in strategy number,strategy choice,strategy accuracy;The difficulty of problems had significantly different effect on strategies selection and execution between children with different arithmetical abilities,that’s children with higher arithmetical abilities were more adaptive to problem difficulty than those with low arithmetical abilities.