5-6 Years Old Children Get The Algorithm: Understanding Or Memory

Is children’s acquiring of arithmetic a process of understanding or memorizing ? If arithmetic can not be acquired by transmission directly,can we facilitate children to get arithmetic externally? Can children acquire arithmetic without understanding rationale(logical reason behind arithmetic)? 90 children aged5 to 6 were selected as the research object. The task of sequence operation as one of classical Piaget tasks was chosen to examine how to facilitate children’s acquiring of arithmetic. The research was composed of three groups of experimental treatments : the first group was simple arithmetic training,the second group was rationale understanding plus arithmetic training while the last group is control group. Moreover, the color-judging task of tomato-cucumber was used to investigate children’s developmental level of inhibitory control, thereby discuss the connection between children’s acquiring of arithmetic and their developmental level of inhibitory control. The results show that: 1. For children aged 5 to 6, the acquiring of arithmetic is a process of understanding instead of memorizing. Understanding the inevitability of rationale can facilitate them to know the arithmetic well. 2. The developmental level of children’s inhibitory control is connected with the acquiring of arithmetic.