A Research On The Effect Of Time Prompt And Item Similarity On Analogical Reasoning

Recently, mathematical reasoning is becoming the focus of people. Cognitive Psychologist, Mathematical Educationist, Mathematician, Philosopher and Linguist more and more attach great importance to the affection of analogical reasoning in human's learning and development. Mathematical reasoning has been the inter-subject field.Analogical reasoning is one of the most important mechanisms in human's thinking. Thinking from formal logic, analogical reasoning reach the other object some special property according to some similar property of two objects or two kinds of objects and known one of the objects'other special quality.So we can see that similarity is the key element of analogical reasoning which use of same or different sort of objects.Cognitive Psychologists introduce kinds of analogical reasoning's theory in two main aspects. One research the development of the ability of analogical reasoning. The other research the process of analogical reasoning.Structure similarity is that the relationship of objects in one problem corresponding the objects'relationship in another problem. Structure similarity which has special position in analogical reasoning is the key element, but superficial similarity.Some investigators take up with superficial similarity. Superficial similarity means that the former problem and the later have some similar content, e.g. object and property. Some theories ignore the affection of superficial similarity because emphasize structure similarity. But some theories suggest opposite opinion that superficial similarity is also important.Besides, some research indicate that match the object's structure demand more time and resource than object's property. The research of Goldstone and Medin indicate that people are affected by partial property when having time restrict. But people may choose the same structure when having enough time.In the research of Novick and Bassck, the ability to solve mathematical problem of students can improve by teaching them how to apply analogical reasoning. Then this factor is added into the experiment.Most researches concentrate on children and rarely on the students in the junior middle school inland and abroad. So the subjects in the experiment are junior middle school's students in order to perfect the analogical reasoning theory.Two experiments are designed in the paper. There are two independent variances in experiment one. One is time prompt which is a between-subject variance. Another is item similarity which is a in-subject variance. The dependent variance is the number of correct problems. The result is that the main effect of item similarity is significant, P<0.01. In order to distinguishing the difference among the three similarities, Post Hoc Test is made. The outcome is that the discrepancy between superficial similarity and structure similarity, between superficial similarity and both have superficial and structure similarity, between structure similarity and both have superficial and structure similarity are all significant.Meanwhile, the main effect of time prompt is not significant, that is the affection of time prompt or no time prompt is small. The interaction between item similarity and time prompt is not significant.There are three independent variances in experiment two. The first variance is time prompt which is a between-subject variance. The second variance is the mathematic scores of subjects in last test which is a between-subject variance. The third variance is item similarity which is a in-subject variance. The dependent variance is the number of correct problems.The results indicate that the main effect of subject's mathematic scores is significant. The main effect of time prompt is not significant and the main effect of item similarity is significant.Meanwhile, the interaction between mathematic score and time prompt is significant. The interaction between mathematic score and item similarity is significant. But the interaction between time prompt and item similarity is not significant. Also, the interaction among mathematic score, time prompt and item similarity is not significant.This research connect similarity which is often concerned, time prompt which is rarely concerned and the mathematic score of subjects. From this design we can see whether time prompt affect analogical reasoning. We also can discuss whether there's a comprehensive effect among the three factors or not. All the consequence can enrich the theory of analogical reasoning.