Piagetian Tasks and Traditional Intelligence as Predictors of Performance on Addition and Subtraction Tasks in Primary School Grades One and Two

Summary

A broad range of three types of Piagetian tasks—conservation, seriation, and multiple classification—as well as the intelligence subtests from the P.M.A. 5 to 7 were administered to 283 children from primary school Grades 1 and 2. Nine months after the first test administration these children also completed addition and subtraction tasks and reversal arithmetic tasks. It was found that conservation and seriation were somewhat better predictors of the achievement on the addition and subtraction tasks than the intelligence subtests Space and Figure Sorting. The combination of these two types of Piagetian tasks and these two intelligence subtests did not improve the prediction. It was also shown that these Piagetian tasks were as good predictors of the performance on the reversal tasks as the two intelligence subtests Space and Figure Sorting. However, multiple classification tasks and the Perceptual Speed intelligence subtest had very low correlations with both kinds of arithmetic tasks. Because the items of the Perceptual Speed subtest also consisted of classification tasks, it can be concluded that classification tasks are not suitable as predictors of such computational skills.