Mental Arithmetic in Africa and America: Strategies, Principles, and Explanations

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Abstract
Mental arithmetic abilities were studied among unschooled African adults and American college students. A set of problems tested the use of the four basic arithmetic operations. Performance was analyzed for: strategies, implicit arithmetic principles, and explicit explanations of the principles. Both groups showed accurate mental arithmetic strategies related to the base ten structure of their native counting systems. The American students' mental strategies additionally made use of algorithms based on written place values. Several principles were implicit in the calculation strategies of both groups, and both used these principles to short‐cut calculations. Though the African subjects did not, the American subjects did describe these abstract principles in explicit common language or algebraic expressions. Relationships between schooling and cognition are discussed.

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