Numerical cognition
Why do good maths students still trip over tricky word problems?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Even children who were good at maths made many errors when a word problem said 'less than' but actually required adding, and those with better reading comprehension were less affected.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — 2 x 2 x 2 design: consistency and markedness of the relational term manipulated within subjects; successful vs less successful solvers (median split on a national maths test) between subjects.
- N
- N=80 · 80 Dutch sixth graders from eight schools, split into 39 successful and 41 less successful word problem solvers.
- Population
- Dutch sixth-grade children (mean age about 11.7) taught with Realistic Mathematics Education
- Outcome
- Accuracy on eight two-step compare word problems; correlations with standardised reading comprehension
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Key findings
Overall, children were less accurate on inconsistent than consistent problems, a medium-to-large consistency effect. Less successful solvers showed this effect for both 'more than' and 'less than' problems, whereas successful solvers showed it only for 'less than' problems, where they had to add despite the wording. Among successful solvers only, better reading comprehension was linked to a smaller consistency effect on these marked problems (r about -0.40); no such link appeared for less successful solvers.
Methodology
Eighty Dutch sixth graders solved eight two-step shopping word problems in which the wording either matched the needed operation (consistent) or pointed the wrong way (inconsistent), and used either 'more than' (unmarked) or the harder 'less than' (marked). Children were split into successful and less successful solvers by their score on a national maths test, and their reading comprehension was measured with a standardised national test.
Limitations
The claim that the curriculum under-teaches reading comprehension is the authors' interpretation, not something the study measured; no classrooms or instruction were observed or compared. Each child solved only two problems per type, the solver groups came from a median split, and reading comprehension was correlated with performance rather than trained, so it cannot be shown to cause better problem solving. The sample was from one country and one curriculum.
How this study connects
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