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The influence of the place-value structure of the Arabic number ...

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whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> carry effect for addition (as requiring correct <strong>place</strong>-<strong>value</strong> integration) in grade<br />

three can be traced back to indices <strong>of</strong> basic numerical competency in first grade, such as <strong>the</strong><br />

distance effect and, more particularly, to indices <strong>of</strong> <strong>place</strong>-<strong>value</strong> understanding such as <strong>the</strong><br />

compatibility effect or <strong>the</strong> rate <strong>of</strong> inversion errors. Additionally, we were interested whe<strong>the</strong>r<br />

<strong>the</strong> percentage <strong>of</strong> errors in carry problems is accounted for best by <strong>the</strong> same basic numerical<br />

competencies as is <strong>the</strong> error rate in non-carry problems. To evaluate <strong>the</strong>se most differential<br />

aspects <strong>of</strong> longitudinal numerical development three stepwise regression analyses were<br />

conducted. All regression analyses incorporated <strong>the</strong> same predictors but varied with regard to<br />

<strong>the</strong> dependent variable (i.e., carry effect for addition errors vs. error rate in carry problems vs.<br />

error rate in non-carry problems). <strong>The</strong> included predictors were: (i) <strong>the</strong> (decade) distance as<br />

well as (ii) <strong>the</strong> compatibility effect for errors in <strong>the</strong> magnitude comparison task, <strong>the</strong> five<br />

disjoint subgroups <strong>of</strong> transcoding errors as introduced by Zuber et al. (2009): (iii) lexical<br />

errors, (iv) inversion errors (v) additive composition errors, (vi) multiplicative composition<br />

errors and (vii) combination errors. In addition to <strong>the</strong>se predictors reflecting basic numerical<br />

competencies <strong>number</strong>-unrelated measures <strong>of</strong> IQ, verbal as well as visuo-spatial WM and CE<br />

were also incorporated as predictors. <strong>The</strong>reby, it was aimed to distinguish possible nonnumerical<br />

<strong>influence</strong>s <strong>of</strong> intelligence or WM capacity from effects attributable to children’s<br />

basic numerical competencies such as transcoding, <strong>number</strong> magnitude as well as <strong>place</strong>-<strong>value</strong><br />

understanding.<br />

Please note that for this last step only <strong>the</strong> results <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> regression analyses will be<br />

reported in <strong>the</strong> main text body for reasons <strong>of</strong> lucidity and brevity. To provide <strong>the</strong> reader with a<br />

full overview over all results never<strong>the</strong>less, all correlation analyses are given in Appendix A.<br />

Carry effect: <strong>The</strong> stepwise multiple regression analysis produced a significant model<br />

[R = .29, adjusted R 2 = .06; F(3, 91) = 4.08, p < .05, f 2 = .09] incorporating <strong>the</strong> first grade CE<br />

score and <strong>the</strong> percentage <strong>of</strong> pure inversion transcoding errors as <strong>the</strong> only reliable predictors<br />

(see Table 4, Panel A). <strong>The</strong> positive beta weight for both predictors indicated that a relatively<br />

151

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