Linsen Sarah, Verschaffel Lieven, Reynvoet Bert, De Smedt Bert
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium.
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2014 Jan;145:75-83. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.10.008. Epub 2013 Dec 1.
Children apply various strategies to mentally solve multi-digit subtraction problems and the efficient use of some of them may depend more or less on numerical magnitude processing. For example, the indirect addition strategy (solving 72-67 as "how much do I have to add up to 67 to get 72?"), which is particularly efficient when the two given numbers are close to each other, requires to determine the proximity of these two numbers, a process that may depend on numerical magnitude processing. In the present study, children completed a numerical magnitude comparison task and a number line estimation task, both in a symbolic and nonsymbolic format, to measure their numerical magnitude processing. We administered a multi-digit subtraction task, in which half of the items were specifically designed to elicit indirect addition. Partial correlational analyses, controlling for intellectual ability and motor speed, revealed significant associations between numerical magnitude processing and mental multi-digit subtraction. Additional analyses indicated that numerical magnitude processing was particularly important for those items for which the use of indirect addition is expected to be most efficient. Although this association was observed for both symbolic and nonsymbolic tasks, the strongest associations were found for the symbolic format, and they seemed to be more prominent on numerical magnitude comparison than on number line estimation.
儿童运用各种策略在头脑中解决多位数减法问题，其中一些策略的有效运用可能或多或少依赖于数字大小处理。例如，间接加法策略（将72 - 67 当作“我要给67加上多少才能得到72？”来求解），当两个给定数字彼此接近时，该策略特别有效，它需要确定这两个数字的接近程度，这一过程可能依赖于数字大小处理。在本研究中，儿童完成了数字大小比较任务和数轴估计任务，这两项任务都有符号和非符号两种形式，以测量他们的数字大小处理能力。我们进行了一项多位数减法任务，其中一半的题目是专门设计用来引出间接加法的。在控制了智力能力和运动速度的偏相关分析中，揭示了数字大小处理与多位数心算减法之间存在显著关联。进一步的分析表明，对于那些预计间接加法使用效率最高的题目，数字大小处理尤为重要。尽管在符号和非符号任务中都观察到了这种关联，但在符号形式中发现的关联最强，而且它们在数字大小比较上似乎比在数轴估计上更为突出。
