INFLUENCE OF SITUATIONAL AND MATHEMATICAL INFORMATION ON SITUATIONALLY DIFFICULT WORD PROBLEMS

Arithmetical word problem solving has a double nature, textual and mathematical, that is, several cognitive processes related to the comprehension of a word problem as a text and as a mathematical structure to be grasped and manipulated are involved in the word problem solving process and influence children's task performance. Theoretical models and empirical studies have accounted for the implications of these different processes for word problem solving. Based on the rewording methodology a new study was set up to assess the influence of two kinds of rewording - mathematical and situational - on two-step change problems of two different levels of mathematical and situational difficulty. Results showed that while mathematical rewording improved children's performance on mathematically as well as situationally difficult problems, situational rewording was not useful for any of them.