Metacognitive prompts and numerical ordinality in solving word problems: An eye-tracking study

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Mathematics Education

Background:

• Translating concrete manipulatives to abstract formulas aids math problem-solving.
• Metacognitive prompts significantly enhance this translation process for students.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the impact of metacognitive prompts and numerical ordinality (cardinal vs. ordinal numbers) on Chinese primary students' problem-solving.
• Examine effects on information searching and cognitive processing using eye-movement metrics.

Main Methods:

• A 2x2 mixed experimental design with 73 primary students (38 boys, 35 girls).
• Independent variables: prompt information (no-prompt, metacognitive-prompt) and number attribute (cardinal, ordinal).
• Dependent variables: eye-movement indices (fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, pupil size).

Main Results:

• Metacognitive prompts led to smaller pupil sizes and shorter dwell times, indicating optimized processing.
• Higher fixation durations and saccadic amplitudes were observed for ordinal number problems, suggesting lower reading efficiency.
• Students experienced increased difficulty with ordinal number word problems.

Conclusions:

• Metacognitive prompts reduce cognitive load for upper-grade primary students.
• Solving cardinal number problems results in lower cognitive load compared to ordinal number problems.
• Ordinal number problems impose a higher cognitive load on students.