The hypothesis explored was that learning disabled children's poor math performance was related to their ability to make strategy transformations. The present experiment used simple arithmetic operations that allowed for seven transformations. Nondisabled children were superior in performance to disabled on transformations that required reordering or the abandoning of previously learned strategies. For the majority of transformation tasks, significant ability group differences occurred on the encoding and retrieval stage of processing. The results suggest that learning disabled children use an inefficient algorithm to transform previously learned strategies. Three implications of the results are discussed.
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