Effect Of Language Switching On Arithmetic

The question about the relationship between"the arithmetic"and"the language"has existed since there was"the arithmetic". Now, the role of language in performing numerical computations has been a topic of special interest in cognition. Dehaene et al. embarked from the behavior experiments and the brain image formation researches'results and proposed the"Triple Code Model", assumed that the operation process relied on the language to what kind of degree possibly is decides by the operation duty. As the most basic computing powers, exact calculation and approximation are two heterogeneity abilities. Exact calculation mainly refers to the individual's ability to use digits and mathematics operative symbols, following certain operational rules and according to certain calculation steps to obtain the quite precise computed results. It is the cognition foundation of modern mathematics knowledge system which takes precision and quantitation as the two major features, and has been the elementary object of school education and the individuals'mathematics learning; Computational estimation is one estimate form that the individual doesn't undergone the precise computation, but only draws support from the original knowledge to give the sketchy answer. It is also an interaction process among mental arithmetic, the number concept and the computation skills, and plays an important role in the solution of actual problems, enhancing the efficiency of question solution. It has a very strong usability and universality. In recent years researches in traditional cognition psychology, trans-culture comparison, nerve psychology case, zoopsychology and brain image formation and so on have indicated that exact calculation mainly uses the speech encoding, but computational estimation possibly bases on the vision-spatial information cognition processing, independent of language function reversely. However, the above researches are mostly selected the West to try, and were carried out under the visual single channel condition, then we want to know whether the findings under different channel conditions will be consistent with that of the visual single channel condition? Therefore we attempt a direct manipulation of language using different arithmetic tasks to assess the role of language in forming arithmetic representations and in solving problems in different languages, thus further enrich and confirm the relation between language and arithmetic.This research designed two formal experiments to inspect the effect of language switching on exact calculation and computational estimation under the conditions of auditory channel and auditory-visual channel employing subjects from English department. There is a pre-experimentation before each formal experiment to provide basis for the material design and stimuli-presenting in official experiments; through analyzing the reaction time and accuracy, the official experiments tried to investigate the influence of language switching on calculation and the relationship between computational estimation and exact calculation.The findings indicated:(1) Findings from RT showed that regardless of which speech training (English or Chinese) taken as the premise, and no matter under which condition (pure hearing channel and the auditory-visual cross channel) to carry on the computation, students'Chinese reaction time must be shorter than English reaction time in the formal examination; estimation RT was basically longer than exact calculation RT.(2) There was a significant main effect of language switching only in exact calculation under the auditory condition. Under the condition of auditory-visual cross channel the situation was quite complex: taking Chinese practice as the premise, the main effects of language transforming were both significant to two kinds of computation types; take English practice as the premise, the language switching did not have the obvious influence on both estimation and exact calculation.(3) Results from the response accuracy indicated that regardless of which speech training taken as the premise, and no matter under which condition to carry on the computation, the accuracy in Chinese computation was higher than that in English computation, but the difference was not remarkable. There was a main effect of computation types in accuracy, and it showed that the accuracy of computational estimation must be lower than that of the exact calculation.(4) The results obtained from the comparison between the two conditions (hearing channel and the auditory-visual cross channel) showed that in the RT aspect there was a main effect of channel specificity, that is, the RTs under the pure auditory channel were much longer than that under the auditory-visual cross channel, regardless of taking Chinese or English training as the premise to carry on computation.(5) In the accuracy aspect, the channel specificity did not display the remarkable main effect. If took Chinese training as the prerequisite, the computation accuracy under the pure hearing channel was lower than that under the cross channel condition; if take English training as the prerequisite, the result was just opposite.To sum up, the following conclusions were drawn :(1) Under the condition of hearing channel, there was no significant effect of the language switching on the computational estimation, but a remarkable influence on the exact calculation. These conclusions were basically consistent with former studies, and indicated that the estimation was not easier to receive the influence of the language function compared with the exact calculation. The situation was quite complex under auditory-visual cross channel condition, and indicated that channel specificity maybe disturb the influences of the language switching on the arithmetic.(2) Experimental results from the comparison between the different sensory channels did not conform to the core theory supposition of the"Triple Code Model"completely. That is"the concrete functional module separately corresponds with the specific digital coding and the specific cognition function".