Reading and Calculating in Word Problem Solving
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Published abstract in conference proceedings › Research › peer-review
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Proceeding of the 46th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 1). ed. / Michal Ayalon; Boris Koichu; Roza Leikin; Laurie Rubel; Michal Tabach. Vol. 1 Haifa, Israel : University of Haifa, 2023. p. 333 (Psychology of Mathematics Education; Vol. 46).
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Published abstract in conference proceedings › Research › peer-review
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TY - CHAP
T1 - Reading and Calculating in Word Problem Solving
AU - Strohmaier, Anselm R.
AU - Schons, Christian
AU - Knabbe, Alina
AU - Vogel, Markus
N1 - Conference code: 46
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Word problem solving combines linguistic and mathematical processes, includingreading and calculating. However, it is still unclear how strongly these processesoverlap, e.g., if calculations occur parallel or serially during reading. Also, it is unclearhow much the mental representation created during reading and the mentalrepresentation in which calculations are integrated (e.g., Thevenot et al., 2007). In thepresent study, we present data from an experiment that investigated the overlapbetween reading and calculating based on the observation of eye movements duringword problem solving.We systematically varied three-line word problems by manipulating a) the lexicaldifficulty of two words which were irrelevant for calculations and b) the numericaldifficulty of the word problem which was irrelevant for reading. We analyzed the meanfixation duration, which can be interpreted as an indicator for the cognitive effortduring processing of visual information (Strohmaier et al., 2020). If processes ofreading and calculating occur serially and in delimited mental representations, themanipulation should only affect the mean fixation duration of the varied words andnumbers.Analyses of the pilot data from N = 17 undergraduate students show that numericaldifficulty influences the mean fixation duration on numbers, but also on the remainingtext. Effects of lexical difficulty showed similar trends, but were not significant.Based on these results and additional data, we argue that eye movements indicate thatcognitive processes of reading and calculating overlap during word problem solvingand occur in a shared mental representation.
AB - Word problem solving combines linguistic and mathematical processes, includingreading and calculating. However, it is still unclear how strongly these processesoverlap, e.g., if calculations occur parallel or serially during reading. Also, it is unclearhow much the mental representation created during reading and the mentalrepresentation in which calculations are integrated (e.g., Thevenot et al., 2007). In thepresent study, we present data from an experiment that investigated the overlapbetween reading and calculating based on the observation of eye movements duringword problem solving.We systematically varied three-line word problems by manipulating a) the lexicaldifficulty of two words which were irrelevant for calculations and b) the numericaldifficulty of the word problem which was irrelevant for reading. We analyzed the meanfixation duration, which can be interpreted as an indicator for the cognitive effortduring processing of visual information (Strohmaier et al., 2020). If processes ofreading and calculating occur serially and in delimited mental representations, themanipulation should only affect the mean fixation duration of the varied words andnumbers.Analyses of the pilot data from N = 17 undergraduate students show that numericaldifficulty influences the mean fixation duration on numbers, but also on the remainingtext. Effects of lexical difficulty showed similar trends, but were not significant.Based on these results and additional data, we argue that eye movements indicate thatcognitive processes of reading and calculating overlap during word problem solvingand occur in a shared mental representation.
KW - Educational science
KW - Didactics of Mathematics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85180749409&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Published abstract in conference proceedings
SN - 978-965-93112-1-7
VL - 1
T3 - Psychology of Mathematics Education
SP - 333
BT - Proceeding of the 46th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 1)
A2 - Ayalon, Michal
A2 - Koichu, Boris
A2 - Leikin, Roza
A2 - Rubel, Laurie
A2 - Tabach, Michal
PB - University of Haifa
CY - Haifa, Israel
T2 - 46th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education - PME 2023
Y2 - 16 July 2023 through 21 July 2023
ER -