The Impact Of Central Executive Component Of Working Memory On Computational Estimation

As a commonly used form of mathematical estimation, computational estimation has attracted more domestic and international attention these years. The popularity of calculation tools can not replace the development of people's ability to estimate, and financial management, shopping and other digital information processing services in daily life are required to participate in the estimation. For effective instruction, it is necessary to explore the process and impacting factor of computational estimation. Recently many researchers have found that there is an important correlation between mathematics cognition and working memory, and many calculation processes require the participation of working memory, especially central executive component, which plays an important effect on strategy choice and digital processing. In order to provide the basis for estimation training, this study used experimental methods to inspect the impact of central executive component of working memory on estimation performance and strategy choice.This research included three experiments. One was to explore whether central executive component participated in process of computational estimation. Problem-size effect was investigated too. The other two were to inspect the impact of central executive component on choice between two estimation strategies.The results showed that:(1)Adding central executive load interfered subjects'computational estimation performances.(2)There were no significant differences in performances between simple problems and complex problems. However, the order of the single digits in two multipliers affected the accuracy of estimation, and a sequence effect appeared.(3)Adding central executive load made subjects'strategy choice between turn up and turn down strategies inappropriate and the processing time extended.(4)For more difficult strategy choice, there were no significant differences when added central executive load.Based on the above findings, the following conclusions were drawn:(1)Central executive working memory participated in the process of computational estimation, and affected the accuracy of estimation. There was no problem-size effect found. But when adding executive load, order of units affected computational estimation efficiency.(2)Central executive working memory affected simple computational estimation strategy choice at accuracy and processing time. But different strategies may have different effects. When the difficulty of strategy choice improved, the voice judgment task may not interfere choice flexibility. Future research may explore this problem.