Cognitive Research On Solving Addition And Subtraction Word Problems For The Deaf Students

An important component of mathematical training is solving addition and subtraction word problems. Solving word problems demands the abilities to access many different skills, such as language understanding, an understanding of the described situation, the ability to find an equation, and computation abilities to solve the problem. Because of the loss of the hearing, most of the deaf students experience considerable difficulties with addition and subtraction word problems. Researchers have focused on word problem-solving in normal students. However, there has limited research of deaf students. By the comparison of the normal students and the deaf ones, this study employs various scientific methods and designs a series of experiments to explore the difficulties experienced by the deaf students when presented with addition and subtraction word problems and the roles of the reading abilities, the semantic model representation, the representing strategies, and the metacognitive skills in word problem-solving of the deaf students.This study also explores the impact of a training program to improve the deaf students' problem-solving skills for addition and subtraction word problems.The first part provides an overview of the important previous researches on addition and subtraction word problem-solving of normal students and deaf ones both in the world and in China, such as the comprehension process, the effects of the semantic features as well as the non-semantic ones on problem difficulty, the roles of the representing strategies, the metacognitive skills, and the reading abilities in word problem-solving, the popular research methods, and the unsettled debates of this domain. Finally, the basic research design is proposed.The second part is the experimental studies, which includes two research themes. There are five experiments to explore the influential factors on deaf students' solutions in the first theme. In experiment 1, children are required to solve a series of problems and then to answer some questions. Experiment 1 is conducted to explore the difficulties experienced by the deaf students and the roles of the semantic model representation, the representing strategies, and the metacognitive skills in addition and subtraction word problem-solving of the deaf students by the comparison of the normal students and the deaf ones. In experiment 2, the normal students and the deaf ones are required to select pictures that represented the problems' structures and then to solve a series of problems with pictures that best represented the situation described in the stories. Experiment 2 is conducted to explore the relationship between solution success and the ability to conceptualize properly problem situations as described by problem texts. In experiment 3, the deaf students are required to build material representation with pieces. Experiment 3 is conducted to reveal the relationship between comprehension of verbal messages and word problem-solving of the deaf students. In experiment 4, the deaf students are required to play some card games. Experiment 4 is conducted to measure students' knowledge about linguistic numerical difference and to reveal the relationship between the conceptual structures in the quantitative domain and word problem-solving of the deaf students. In experiment 5, the eye-movements of the normal students and the deaf ones are monitored while they read and solve addition and subtraction word problems. Experiment 5 is conducted to reveal the participants' ongoing comprehension and problem-solving processes. There is one experiment(Experiment 6) to explore the impact of an comprehensive training to improve the deaf students' problem-solving skills for addition and subtraction word problems in the second theme.The third part comprehensively analyzes the results and gives some suggestions.The fourth part summarizes the major conclusions and gives some perspectives for future research. The results show that: (1) The deaf students experience considerable difficulties with addition and subtraction word problems and exist more cognitive deficits than the normal ones in the third grade of primary schools. (2) Deaf students as a group show greater variability and less internal stability in their cognitive abilities on addition and subtraction word problem-solving than the normal students population. (3) The majority of deaf students' enors are unable to derive an accurate solution equation. The inability to determine what computation is necessary for solution is due to difficulties in reading and understanding the words of problem, misrepresentation of problem structure, unsuitable representing strateies, poor metacognitive skills, and so forth. (4) The difficulties experienced by the deaf students were not the inherent deficits of deafness. The comprehensive training consisting of reading comprehension, representing strategies, semantic modeling, and metacognitive strategies, which lasts a certain duration, can be effective at improving the deaf students' performance and the cognitive abilities on addition and subtraction word problem-solving.