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Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies

It is notoriously difficult for people to adaptively apply formal mathematical strategies learned in school to real-world contexts, even when they possess the required mathematical skills. The current study explores whether a problem context’s mechanism can act as an “embodied analogy” onto which ab...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Liu, Allison S., Schunn, Christian D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5281666/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28203634
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-016-0044-1
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author Liu, Allison S.
Schunn, Christian D.
author_facet Liu, Allison S.
Schunn, Christian D.
author_sort Liu, Allison S.
collection PubMed
description It is notoriously difficult for people to adaptively apply formal mathematical strategies learned in school to real-world contexts, even when they possess the required mathematical skills. The current study explores whether a problem context’s mechanism can act as an “embodied analogy” onto which abstract mathematical concepts can be applied, leading to more frequent use of formal mathematical strategies. Participants were asked to program a robot to navigate a maze and to create a navigation strategy that would work for differently sized robots. We compared the strategy complexity of participants with high levels of mechanistic knowledge about the robot against participants with low levels of mechanistic knowledge about the robot. Mechanistic knowledge was significantly associated with the frequency and complexity of the mathematical strategies used by participants, suggesting that learning to recognize a problem context’s mechanism may promote independent mathematical problem solving in applied contexts.
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spelling pubmed-52816662017-02-13 Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies Liu, Allison S. Schunn, Christian D. Cogn Res Princ Implic Original Article It is notoriously difficult for people to adaptively apply formal mathematical strategies learned in school to real-world contexts, even when they possess the required mathematical skills. The current study explores whether a problem context’s mechanism can act as an “embodied analogy” onto which abstract mathematical concepts can be applied, leading to more frequent use of formal mathematical strategies. Participants were asked to program a robot to navigate a maze and to create a navigation strategy that would work for differently sized robots. We compared the strategy complexity of participants with high levels of mechanistic knowledge about the robot against participants with low levels of mechanistic knowledge about the robot. Mechanistic knowledge was significantly associated with the frequency and complexity of the mathematical strategies used by participants, suggesting that learning to recognize a problem context’s mechanism may promote independent mathematical problem solving in applied contexts. Springer International Publishing 2017-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC5281666/ /pubmed/28203634 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-016-0044-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Article
Liu, Allison S.
Schunn, Christian D.
Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
title Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
title_full Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
title_fullStr Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
title_full_unstemmed Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
title_short Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
title_sort applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5281666/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28203634
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-016-0044-1
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