A Study On The Basic Arithmetic Ability Of Primary School Students And Their Diversities Of Central Executive Functions

The basic arithmetic ability is a kind of basic cognitive abilities of human being, and plays an important role in developmental education of the children. Therefore, researchers have paid more attention to the factors which affect arithmetic ability. Up to the present, the importance of working memory in cultivating arithmetic ability has been proved in mass of psychological factors researches. As a core part of working memory, central executive functions take charge of control and coordination of the information processing in working memory system. Baddeley(1996) advanced that central executive functions can make a further separation, including four sub-functions, that are coordinating performance on dual tasks, inhibiting the disrupting effect of others, switching retrieval strategies, and information updating of long term memory. Although central executive functions have been proved to support the importance in children's arithmetic Cognition from previous researches, the researches in the relation between the diversity of central executive functions and arithmetic ability so far are rare and inconsistence.This research studies the relation between the diversity of central executive functions and arithmetic ability from the separation perspective of central executive function, and selects three age levels participants to explore children's development feature in each sub-function of central executive function. The course of participants' selection was carried on in two steps. First, normal intelligence students of three grades are selected by TONI-2. Then, these students were selected with arithmetic ability test, and sorted out groups of students with high arithmetic ability and groups with low arithmetic ability. The sample includes 54 second grade students, 54 third grade students, and 58 forth grade students, amounts to 160 students. This research uses the inhibition function experiment, the switching function experiment, and the updating function experiment to explore each separate central execution function's role in forming children's arithmetic ability. Using the repeated priming paradigm, the inhibition function experiment is tried to verify whether there are difference in the performance of inhibition mechanism among participants of each grade with high arithmetic ability and low arithmetic ability by investigating their function of inhibiting irrelevant information. The switching function experiment is tried to explore the relation between children's switching function and arithmetic ability and their development feature by investigating the switching ability of how the participants choose the inner figure or the outer figure in color directions. The updating function experiment is tried to explore the relation between children's updating function and arithmetic ability and their development feature by inspecting participants' ability in holding and updating information under the semantic rule.The result of inhibition function experiment shows: the mean correct rate of the participants with low arithmetic ability is significant lower than that of the participants with high arithmetic ability. Although the inhibition performance among the participants of three age levels doesn't show significant difference, it shows rising trend in general.The result of switching function experiment shows: the mean switching RT of the participants with low arithmetic ability is longer than that of the participants with high arithmetic ability both on common figures condition and on special figures condition, and the mean switching wrong rate of the participants with low arithmetic ability is higher than that of the participants with high arithmetic ability on both conditions. The mean switching wrong rate among the participants of three age levels doesn't show significant difference on common figures condition, but it shows significant difference on special figures condition. The mean switching RT among the participants of three age levels shows significant difference on both conditions, and the difference on special figures condition is much more than it on common figures condition.The result of updating function experiment shows: On the four conditions with different suppression and load, all of the mean updating performances of the participants with high arithmetic ability are significant higher than that of the participants with low arithmetic ability. The participants' updating ability of three age levels shows rising trend on all the four conditions.Therefore, a conclusion can be given: children with low arithmetic ability are short of inhibition efficacy in inhibition function when they perform working memory tasks. Furthermore, the performance in inhibition function development of children of three age levels doesn't show staggered feature. Children with low arithmetic ability are short of switching efficacy. And the performance in switching function development of children of three age levels shows significant rising trend. Children with low arithmetic ability are short of updating efficacy. And the performance in updating function development of children of three age levels shows significant rising trend.In conclusion: each sub-function's efficacy of central executive functions of children with low arithmetic ability is worse than that of children with high arithmetic ability. In addition, each sub-function's efficacy of central executive functions of children is developing along with their growing up.