Investigated was the effect of textbook, sex, and the setting of the presentation of the problem on the ability of first-year algebra students to recognize the properties of cummutativity, identity element, and inverses. A random sample of 40 pupils, 20 males and 20 females, was selected from a student population of 774 ninth grade algebra students in the school year 1965-66. Ten males and females respectively were using "Algebra - Its Elements and Structure, Book I" by Banks and others, and the remaining students were using "Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3" by Van Engen and others. A personal interview type test consisting of 18 questions, six each on the indicated concepts, was developed for this study. Half of the test situations were presented in a mathematical setting while the remainder were in a physical setting. Analysis of variance techniques and other tests yielded the following results: (1) The mean performance of first year algebra students is greatly effected by the type of textbooks they use, (2) sex is not significantly related to understanding of the indicated properties, (3) commutativity is the easiest of the properties studied, and (4) recognizing commutativity was considerably easier in a mathematical setting than in a physical setting while the opposite was true of recognizing inverses. (RP)