ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one important influence on factual and procedural knowledge: memory and some related cognitive functions. It describes several important influences on factual and procedural knowledge, since, like many cognitive functions, memory has several components, and these influence factual and procedural knowledge in different ways and to different degrees. Individual differences in memory, attention and ‘executive function’ have frequently been invoked to explain individual differences in arithmetic. Children with arithmetical difficulties have generally been found to have a lower counting span than children without such difficulties. Some studies suggest that verbal or phonological working memory is particularly important for some specific aspects of arithmetic, such as counting and word problems. S. Clayton and C. Gilmore found that executive function predicted both quantity estimation and arithmetical skills, but that there was almost no relationship between quantity estimation and arithmetical skills.
