Comprensión de problemas aritméticos en alumnos con y sin éxito

Abstract

Comprehension of arithmetic word problems: a comparison of successful and unsuccessful students. In an experiment with university students on comprehension of arithmetic word problems, Hegarty et al. (1995) demostrated that unsuccessful problem solvers base their solution plan on numbers and keywords that they select from the problem (the diret translation strategy), where as successful problem solvers construct a model of the situation described in the problem and base their solution plan on this model (the problem-model strategy). In this article, a replication of one of their experiments is presented. Here, however, Primary School students were involved and tests were less ample than the ones used by Hegarty and her colleagues. Sujects were asked to resolve consistent and inconsistent problems solvers, and then they had to score recall and recognition tests. Our predictions about the successful students would commit less semantic and more literal errors than unsuccessful problem solvers were partially confirmed.