The validity of verbal reports in children's subtraction

To assess the validity of verbal reports in children's subtraction, students in Grades 1, 3, and 5 were asked to solve a set of simple subtraction problems and were placed in the no-report, retrospective-report, or concurrent-report conditions. Two aspects of verbal report validity were assessed: reactivity, or whether providing a verbal report alters subsequent task performance, and veridicality, or whether the verbal reports are accurate reflections of solution strategies. Students in all grades and in both the retrospective-report and concurrent-report conditions were able to provide veridical strategy reports, and the instruction to verbally report had few effects on task performance. Informal findings indicate that students had less difficulty reporting retrospectively than concurrently.