How Structure Building And Working Memory Effect Algebraic Word Problem Solving

Mathematical word problem,as one of the manifestations of primary and middle school students' mathematical thinking,involved a series of cognitive processing processes,in which well-being problem model quality is the key to successful problem solving.Most studies have shown the component and span of working memory have a specific impact on the word-problem solving process;working memory regulates the process that people build mental model through suppression mechanisms and enhancement mechanisms.Structure building,a kind of cognitive ability to measure the mental model individual constructing,has also been proven to affect the coherence,integrity and organization of mental model on text comprehension.Therefore,there may be a certain relationship between working memory and structure building on wordproblem solving.For example,structure building and working memory may jointly play a role in word problems solving through the suppression mechanism,or they may be separately applied to different stages of building problem representation when solving word problems.In addition,for word problems characterized by strong logic,compared with working memory,can the structure building more effectively and directly predict the students' performance in word problems solving? Based on this,this research focused on structure building which closely related to build mental model in text comprehension,explored the relationship between structure building,working memory and word-problem solving,and how the structure building in individual difference affect the students' performance in word-problem solving.Experiment I explored the relationship between structure building,working memory and word-problem solving through correlation analysis and regression analysis.And by2(structure-building ability:high,low)× 3(problem difficulty: simple,medium,difficult)mixed design with structure building as between-subject factor,problem difficulty as within-subject factor,and correct rate as dependent variable.It is a preliminary understanding of the performance of different structure building ability in solving mathematical problems of various difficulties.Experiment II the design of inserting irrelevant information and eye movement analysis technology,examine the process of solving algebraic problems for those with different structure building ability.By 2(structure-building ability:high,low)×2(whether to insert irrelevant information: yes,no)mixed design,in which structure building is between-subject factor and whether to insert irrelevant information is within-subject factor,clarified how high and low structure builders solved algebraic word problem.The following conclusions were drawn under the conditions of this study:(1)The correlation between structure building and working memory does not reach a significant level,indicating that structure building and working memory represent different cognitive abilities a,involve different cognitive processes.(2)Structure building and working memory jointly predict students' performance on mathematical word-problem test.Though working memory had a stronger effect on wordproblem solving,the role of representation ability in understanding mathematics problems and the unique position of structure building in text comprehension indicated that structure building still can predict the performances on word problem.(3)Individual difference in structure building affect word-problem solving process.The high structure builder can use effective representation strategies more reasonably to construct coherent and complete problem representations,and perform better in wordproblem solving.