The validity of verbal reports in children's subtraction

To assess the validity of verbal reports in children's subtraction, student s in Grades 1, 3, and 5 were asked to solve a set of simple subtraction pro blems and were placed in the no-report, retrospective-report, or concurrent -report conditions. Two aspects of verbal report validity were assessed: re activity, or whether providing a verbal report alters subsequent task perfo rmance, and veridicality, or whether the verbal reports are accurate reflec tions of solution strategies. Students in all grades and in both the retros pective-report and concurrent-report conditions were able to provide veridi cal strategy reports, and the instruction to verbally report had few effect s on task performance. Informal findings indicate that students had less di fficulty reporting retrospectively than concurrently.