Abi. Bernardo, TASK SPECIFICITY IN THE USE OF WORDS IN MATHEMATICS - EVIDENCE FROM BILINGUAL PROBLEM SOLVERS, International journal of psychology, 31(1), 1996, pp. 13-27
Mathematics is often said to be a different language in itself. Three
experiments were conducted to show some evidence for this common notio
n. It was hypothesized that in math word problem solving, people inter
pret words like ''more'' and ''less'' in specialized ways that are spe
cific to the task of math word problem solving. Subjects were given te
xts with quantitative information, but the texts were framed either as
math problems or as stories, and were written either in English or Fi
lipino. Subjects were then asked to verify statements that describe qu
antitative relations given in the text; these relations either stated
an exact or an inexact quantitative difference. The verification respo
nses and verification times in three experiments show that subjects mo
re often accepted the inexact difference as true when the text was fra
med as a story compared to when framed as a problem. These results sup
port the hypothesis that the use of the specialized meaning is specifi
c to the task of solving word problems in math. The data were equivoca
l about the role of the language used in the operation of this knowled
ge. The results were discussed in terms of the implications of specifi
city of knowledge, context sensitivity, and the possible role of langu
age use in the process of learning and developing mathematical knowled
ge.