| In this present study, the relationships among selected cognitive variables and proportional reasoning ability, were examined in sample of eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade Saudi students. Also, this researcher investigated whether the same structure of proportional reasoning tasks existed in Saudi Arabian students as has been documented with North American students. In addition, the categories for classification of the participants' responses on proportional reasoning task were investigated.; It was found that working memory capacity, grade in science, score on the Mathematical Ability Test (MAT), grade, and gender were significantly correlated with proportional reasoning. It was concluded that the factors of large working capacity, higher grade in science, higher score on the MAT, higher grade level, and bing male were correlated with high level of proportional reasoning. Specifically, the findings from this present study confirmed the importance of working memory capacity as one of the most important predictor of proportional reasoning.; The results of this study indicated that the structures of proportional reasoning were in agreement with the structures found by previous studies in the United States and other western countries. Participants found the comparison of equal integral ratios to be the easiest to solve of all the elements used in this study, followed by a comparison of unequal integral ratios. The most difficult elements were the comparison of an integral with a non-integral ratio. Finding missing values for a puzzle, with an integral ratio, was easier than finding a missing value for a puzzle with a non-integral ratio. Also, the results of this study confirmed the common use of non-proportional reasoning strategies among lower grade levels. A substantial percentage (90%) of the eighth grade students and, to some degree, a large percentage (64%) of the tenth grade students lacked the ability to perform well on tests of proportional reasoning.; Also, investigated in this study were the effect of gender and grade on the performance of both the Lemonade Puzzle (LP) tasks and the Laps and Gum (LG) problems. Two mixed findings for the effect of gender were obtained. The first result showed that there was no statistical significant difference between male and female students in their performance on the LP. In the second result, there was a statistically significant difference between male and female students in favor of males in their performance on the LG test. |
