Mentale representaties bij drie aanbiedingsvormen van hoeveelheden Een onderzoek bij leerlingen in groep 4 en 7 in het reguliere basisonderwijs

Abstract

In this research, estimation of children in Dutch primary education was examined. According to the multiple representations hypothesis, both children and adults have and use multiple representations of numbers. The shape of these representations can be logarithmic or linear. As children become older and have more mathematic experience, they are more likely to choose a linear representation. According to the triple code model numbers can be mentally presented in a visual, a verbal or an analogue manner. The aim of this research was to examine whether mental representations have the same degree of logarithmic and linear explained variance when quantities are presented in the three different ways according to the triple code model; by Arabic numbers, verbal numbers and visual dots. For both grade 2 (‘groep 4’, N=34) and grade 5 (‘groep 7’, N=41) it appeared that participants do not process numbers in the same way, as was expected. For both grades the degree of linear explained variance per way of presenting numbers differed significantly. For grade 7 the degree of logarithmic explained variance also differed per way of presenting numbers. The second research question related to the use of linear representations. Just as expected older children appeared to generate more linearly shaped representations than younger children, irrespective of the way the numbers were presented.