The role of intelligence and feedback in children’s strategy competence Koen Luwel a, * , Ageliki Foustana b , Yiannis Papadatos b , Lieven Verschaffel a a Center for Instructional Psychology and Technology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium b Department of Special Education and Psychology, University of Athens, 15784 Athens, Greece article info Article history: Received 30 October 2009 Revised 7 May 2010 Available online xxxx Keywords: Strategy choice Strategy use Intelligence Outcome feedback Strategy feedback Choice/no-choice method abstract A test–intervention–test study was conducted investigating the role of intelligence on four parameters of strategy competence in the context of a numerosity judgment task. Moreover, the effec- tiveness of two feedback types on these four parameters was tested. In the two test sessions, the choice/no-choice method was used to assess the strategy repertoire, frequency, efficiency, and adaptivity of a group of low-, average-, and high-intelligence chil- dren. During the intervention, half of the participants from each intelligence group were given outcome feedback (OFB), whereas the other half received strategy feedback (SFB). The pretest data showed large differences among the three intelligence groups on all four strategy parameters. These differences had disappeared at the posttest due to a particularly strong improvement on all strategy parameters in the low-intelligence group. Furthermore, it was found that SFB was more beneficial than OFB for all param- eters involving strategy selection. These results indicate that intel- ligence plays an important role in children’s strategy use and suggest that strategy feedback can be a powerful instructional tool, especially for low-intelligence children. Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction The past 20 years have witnessed great progress in research on the selection and execution of strat- egies in many domains of human cognition (Siegler, 1996, 2005). This has resulted in new theoretical insights regarding strategy choice and change, in important methodological innovations, and in 0022-0965/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.06.001 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: koen.luwel@ped.kuleuven.be (K. Luwel). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology xxx (2010) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp Please cite this article in press as: Luwel, K., et al. The role of intelligence and feedback in children’s strategy com- petence. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.06.001