The Influencing Of Rural Pupils’ Different Levels Of Mental Arithmetic Strategies On Solving Arithmetic Word Problems

Mental arithmetic is one of the important research fields both in cognitive psychology anddevelopmental psychology. As a basic ability, it plays an important role in improving the level of thinkingfor children, and which has attracted researchers’ extensive attention. At present, there is more research onits affecting factors such as math self efficacy, working memory, processing speed and other factors, butfew research is about the development, especially on the types and levels of mental arithmetic strategies.Because of it, we tried to quantify the types and levels of mental arithmetic strategies by setting the labscene which enriches the content of the research about mental arithmetic. At the same time, we tried tocreate the common mental arithmetic scenarios in their daily life by the way of arithmetic word problems,and to understand the solving effect on arithmetic word problems in different levels of mental arithmeticstrategies. This provided the basis which promoted learning arithmetic word problems by mentalarithmetic.We adopted the methods of oral repot, natural observation, experimentation and the other methods.Using self-designed the tasks, we investigated60subjects who is in three grade to five grade and theirlevels of mental arithmetic, however, we analyzed the different solving effect on arithmetic word problemsby the individual high or low levels of mental arithmetic. The positivistic portion of the dissertationincludes two parts: in studyⅠ, to investigate the characteristics of the type and level of mental arithmeticstrategies in students who are in three grade, four grade and five grade. in studyⅡ, to investigate theinfluence of solving arithmetic word problems by different levels of mental arithmetic strategies. Afterevery task has been finished, we tested their degree of cognitive fatigue in order to examine their cognitivefatigue characteristics. Five findings were obtained:(1)With the rise of grade, children’s speed and accuracy rate of mental arithmetic were improved. Thedifferences between four grade and four grade were not significant, but the differences between three gradeand five grade were the most obvious on the most difficult tasks.(2)The types of mental arithmetic strategies showed diversity that three grades（4grade,5grade and5grade）used. Children in4grade grasped the most types of mental arithmetic strategies, and those in fivehas learned to choose the best of combinations of strategies.(3)With the rise of grade, their levels of mental arithmetic strategies were improved. Decompositionstrategy and extraction strategy were the high levels of mental arithmetic strategies, and they were helpfulto solve problems, but using finger was the low level of mental arithmetic strategies.(4)The reaction time and accuracy rate of solving effect on different types and difficulty conditions ofarithmetic word problems was significant among the students who used high and low levels of mentalarithmetic strategies.(5)All of children showed different cognitive fatigue after they had completed mental arithmetic andarithmetic word problems, the degree of cognitive fatigue when the students had solved arithmetic wordproblems was higher than the arithmetic word problems just they had donemental arithmetic obviously.