Cognitive arithmetic across cultures

Canadian university students either of Chinese origin (CC) or non-Asian ori gin (NAC) and Chinese university students educated in Asia (AC) solved simp le-arithmetic problems in the 4 basic operations (e.g., 3 + 4, 7 - 3, 3 X 4 , 12 divided by 3) and reported their solution strategies. They also comple ted a standardized test of more complex multistep arithmetic. For complex a rithmetic, ACs outperformed both CCs and NACs. For simple arithmetic, howev er, ACs and CCs were equal and both performed better than NACs. The superio r simple-arithmetic skills of CCs relative to NACs implies that extracurric ular culture-specific factors rather than differences in formal education e xplain the simple-arithmetic advantage for Chinese relative to non-Asian No rth American adults. NAC's relatively poor simple-arithmetic performance re sulted both from less efficient retrieval skills and greater use of procedu ral strategies. Nonetheless, all 3 groups reported using procedures for the larger simple subtraction and division problems, confirming the importance of procedural knowledge in skilled adults' performance of elementary mathe matics.