| Pattern recognition ability,as an important part of children’s cognitive ability in mathematics,has a decisive influence on the development of children’s logical thinking ability.The mastery of the characteristics of pattern cognitive ability helps parents and teachers to provide targeted teaching.This study mainly investigated the development of preschool children’s pattern cognitive ability,and analyzed the strategies adopted and the major error types in the tasks.Finally,it also gave some educational advices based on the results.The results of this study showed that:(1)Preschool children already have a certain pattern cognition ability,which will continually grow with age.(2)The number of elements in the pattern affected the capacity development of preschool children’s pattern cognitive ability.The children’s scores declined with the increasing of the elements’ number in the pattern.The 4-to-6-year-old children were able to complete pattern expansion tasks easily within five elements,while the 3-year-olds were only able to complete the tasks successfully within three elements.(3)Children of different ages used different strategies during the tasks.They converted several different strategies depending on the number of elements in the tasks.(4)The error types in the pattern expansion tasks mainly included: failure to identify the regular and stable structure of the pattern;failure to forecast based on the pattern structure or recognize the relationship of the part and whole;failure to understand the pattern. |
