Xu Xiaohui, Chen Chuansheng, Ma Jianfang, Zhao Xiaoting, Jiao Mengwen, Xin Zhiyong
School of Preschool Education, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2020 Nov 20;11:568388. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.568388. eCollection 2020.
Angle is an important concept in geometry. Young children have difficulty separating angle size from other dimensions such as the length of angle sides, perhaps due to whole-object bias in word learning. The present study used the pre-test-training-post-test design to investigate the effectiveness of two ways of separating angle from angle size in 3-6-year-old Chinese preschoolers. A total of 228 children were given a pre-test and 219 of them failed the crucial test. 168 of the 219 children were present at school during the training phase and were randomly assigned to three groups: the "toma" group ( = 57), which received training to call the whole angle figure as "toma" and angle size as angle size; the "angle/angle size" group ( = 56), which received the training of separating "angle" from "angle size"; and the control group ( = 55), which used "angle size" alone to represent both the overall angle figure and angle size. Results showed that the "toma" group improved significantly more than the other two groups, the latter of which did not differ from each other. These results suggest that it is insufficient to have two separate words/phrases (angle and angle size) for children to learn to differentiate angle from angle size, perhaps due to their shared usage of the word . Instead, the use of a novel term is necessary and sufficient to improve learning. Implications for preschool education are discussed.
角是几何学中的一个重要概念。幼儿难以将角的大小与其他维度（如角的边的长度）区分开来，这可能是由于在词汇学习中存在整体对象偏好。本研究采用前测-训练-后测设计，以调查在3至6岁的中国学龄前儿童中，两种将角与角的大小区分开来的方法的有效性。共有228名儿童接受了前测，其中219名在关键测试中未通过。在训练阶段，219名儿童中有168名在学校，并被随机分为三组：“toma”组（n = 57），接受将整个角图形称为“toma”，角的大小称为角大小的训练；“角/角大小”组（n = 56），接受将“角”与“角大小”区分开来的训练；对照组（n = 55），仅用“角大小”来表示整个角图形和角的大小。结果表明，“toma”组的进步明显大于其他两组，而后两组之间没有差异。这些结果表明，对于儿童来说，仅仅有两个单独的词/短语（角和角大小）来学习区分角和角的大小是不够的，这可能是由于它们共用了这个词。相反，使用一个新术语对于提高学习是必要且充分的。文中讨论了对学前教育的启示。
