ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by considering evidence for children's early informal arithmetic skills and the challenges they face when learning formal symbolic arithmetic. It explores the different strategies that children use to solve arithmetic problems and how they select between them, before finishing by considering the role of domain-general skills in arithmetic performance. As is evident from the descriptions below, the majority of research in arithmetic development has focused on addition and subtraction operations, so we know less about the development of multiplication and division understanding. Evidence for the very early understanding of arithmetic was first published in the early 1990s. It seems that the evidence to support infants arithmetic skills is, at best, mixed. Studies with preschool children have shown that they can begin to solve nonverbal calculation problems between the ages of 2 and 4 years old.
