Computer-assisted versus paper-pencil methods for assessing children’s mathematical skills

Nowadays the development and use of the computerised variant of methods is an obvious part of research and diagnosis, which is widely used in psychological practice. Will these computer-assisted tools used for this purpose replace the traditional paper-pencil tools? What are their advantages and disadvantages in comparison to traditional methods? What could such tools never provide to psychologists? The computerised tests are commonly used for assessment of a broad range of cognitive functions as well as capacities, among others for measurement of mathematical competencies and for diagnosis of deficiencies observed in the case of number processing. It allows us to measure the disorder’s indices in a precise way, which is unobtainable in the case of paper-pencil tools (or it is possible only to a limited extent).

This paper presents the critical review of several selected methods, which are used for assessment of children’s mathematical abilities. Here we describe both traditional paper-pencil tasks as well as computer-assisted ones. The aim of this review is to compare these methods in terms of their reliability, advantages and disadvantages, as well as the details of the data provided by both type of tools used for the measurement of mathematical skills in the case of normal development and in the case of cognitive deficits (e.g. dyscalculia).