Skills Underlying Maths: Transfer of Congruency Effects Between Stroop and Multiplication Tasks, 2021

Eaves, Joanne and Gilmore, Camilla and Cragg, Lucy (2025). Skills Underlying Maths: Transfer of Congruency Effects Between Stroop and Multiplication Tasks, 2021. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857654

Good mathematical skills are important for success in modern life, but many children leave school without learning the mathematics they need. Understanding the skills involved in learning mathematics can help provide the right support to improve mathematics learning for all children. In particular, many children struggle to learn number facts, such as multiplication tables. Good recall of number facts helps individuals to be able to focus on other aspects of mathematical problem solving, such as understanding the conceptual relationships involved, or selecting an appropriate solution strategy. It is therefore unsurprising that individuals with good overall mathematics achievement tend to have good number fact knowledge. The importance of good recall of multiplication tables has been recognised by the UK Government, who have recently introduced a new national multiplication tables test to be taken by all children aged 8- to 9-years old from 2020.

There are a variety of approaches that can be used successfully to learn multiplication tables. To help children, many teachers and parents have increasingly turned to paper-based or computerised games and activities. However, at present we don't understand enough about the process of learning multiplication facts to know how to design these activities to be most effective in supporting learning. In particular, we don't know how features of these activities, such as whether children have to produce an answer or select from a range of answers, or whether there is a time limit or no time limit in producing answers, affect the process of learning and remembering multiplication facts. We also don't know if these features may increase anxiety levels for some children.

In order to make recommendations about the design of effective resources we need to understand more about the role of cognitive skills, such as inhibitory control, in number fact learning. Inhibitory control is involved whenever we need to ignore distracting information or suppress unwanted responses. Inhibitory control is likely to be important for learning multiplication facts because when recalling a number fact (e.g. 6 x 7) we need to ignore the answers to closely related facts (e.g. 6 x 6 = 36, 6 x 8 = 48). However, at present the role of inhibitory control in number fact learning is poorly understood.

We will conduct a series of studies that: 1) closely track the process of learning new number facts over time to identify when and how inhibitory control is involved; 2) identify how features of learning activities may increase or decrease the demands for inhibitory control and therefore impact the rate of learning; and 3) identify whether stand-alone inhibitory control training transfers from one context to another and could therefore support number fact learning.

This project will lead to improved understanding of the role of cognitive skills in number fact learning. This will allow the development of educational resources that incorporate design features to maximise the rate of number fact learning. More generally, this project will help to reveal the skills involved in mathematics learning and improve our understanding of why this subject is difficult for many individuals.

Data description (abstract)

This data collection contains data from two large experimental studies with 450 (experiment 1) and 370 (experiment 2) participants aged between 18 and 30 years.

The data consist of accuracy and reaction time data from a two alternative forced choice multiplication task and either an animal or number Stroop task.

The multiplication and Stroop tasks were interleaved on a trial-by-trial basis to examine the transfer of the congruency sequence effect (experiment 1) and the list-wide proportion congruency effect (experiment 2).

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