| Popis: |
In children’s books and textbooks arithmetic word problems often include illustrations. It remains unknown how different problem formats and types of illustrations influence children’s arithmetic problem-solving performance. Some argue that illustrations in word problems enhance children’s understanding of the association between the word problem and the mathematical operation, making the problem more concrete or realistic (Hoogland et al., 2018). However, Berends and van Lieshout (2009) demonstrated that certain illustrations can actually have a negative effect on children’s arithmetic word problem performance produced by irrelevant, redundant or interacting sources of information. In their study, a word problem was presented without an illustration (bare) or with an unhelpful, helpful or essential illustration. Children’s performance decreased primarily in the problems with essential illustrations, i.e. where essential information to solve the arithmetic problem had to be extracted from the illustration. The authors assumed that this effect occurred due to the higher cognitive load imposed by these essential illustrations. However, in that study the essential illustrations necessitated children not only to locate the missing numerical value to solve the problem but also had to count the stimuli in the illustration to get this numerical value. That is an additional task and it could be hypothesised that performance dropped in that condition due to this and not due to the illustration per se. Children in that study were 9 years of age (fifth grade) and they have had a lot of exposure to arithmetic word problems. How do illustrations influence younger children’s performance, who are in the process of learning how to solve two-digit arithmetic word problems? And does a child’s linguistic background influence their reliance on accompanying illustrations? In this study, we aim to answer these questions by exploring how the format in which a two-digit arithmetic problem is presented and the types of illustrations that accompany arithmetic word problems influence young children’s (aged 7-9 years old, i.e., years 3 and 4 in the UK) performance. |
