What Makes Memorization of Basic Arithmetic Facts So Hard? An Investigation of Contributing Cognitive Factors

there be no mistake. Arithmetic is still an important part of elementary school mathematics. Children need to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Children need to learn addition and subtraction facts (such as 8+6=14 and 18-9=9) and multiplication facts (such as 7x6=42)…. As a general rule, parents can expect the following: by the end of second grade, children should know the basic addition and subtraction facts. (NCTM, 2000) In a world filled with hand-held calculators and computers that can run basic computations in nanoseconds, it may seem surprising that parents, educators and politicians are coming to a consensus that children need to be fluent with basic facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. As technology proliferated in the 1980s, speculation abounded that mathematics education would be able to de-emphasize computation and, in turn, emphasize higher-order aspects of mathematics. Some mathematics educators went so far as to recommend that students should have access to a hand-held calculator at all times for use on classwork, homework, and tests. This extreme position caused a great deal of unease, and certainly contributed to the math wars that occurred in California (and other parts of the country) in the 1990s (Rosen, 2000). Research findings from the late 1980s provide support for the long-term importance of acquiring basic facts fluency, including: 1) ability to engage in more advanced mathematics due to a reduction in cognitive load (Bjorklund, Muir-Broaddus, & Schneider