Uncovering the interplay between drawings, mental representations, and arithmetic problem-solving strategies in children and adults.

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate in the scientific community regarding the nature and role of the mental representations involved in solving arithmetic word problems. In this study, we took a closer look at the interplay between mental representations, drawing production, and strategy choice. We used dual-strategy isomorphic word problems sharing the same mathematical structure, but differing in the entities they mentioned in their problem statement. Due to the non-mathematical knowledge attached to these entities, some problems were believed to lead to a specific (cardinal) encoding compatible with one solving strategy, whereas other problems were thought to foster a different (ordinal) encoding compatible with the other solving strategy. We asked 59 children and 52 adults to solve 12 of those arithmetic word problems and to make a diagram of each problem. We hypothesized that the diagrams of both groups would display prototypical features indicating either a cardinal representation or an ordinal representation, depending on the entities mentioned in the problem statement. Joint analysis of the drawing task and the problem-solving task showed that the cardinal and ordinal features of the diagrams are linked with the hypothesized semantic properties of the problems and, crucially, with the choice of one solving strategy over another. We showed that regardless of their experience, participants' strategy use depends on their problem representation, which is influenced by the non-mathematical information in the problem statement, as revealed in their diagrams. We discuss the relevance of drawing tasks for investigating mental representations and fostering mathematical development in school.