L. Fasotti et al., CATEGORIZATION OF ARITHMETIC WORD-PROBLEMS BY NORMALS, FRONTAL AND POSTERIOR-INJURED PATIENTS, Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section A, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology, 16(5), 1994, pp. 723-733
An important stage in the solution of mathematical word problems is th
e formation of a global internal representation of the problem. There
is ample evidence that the recognition of problem schemata or problem
types plays a major role in this representation stage. In the present
study, a sorting task is used in order to examine the knowledge of ari
thmetical word-problem schemata in a group of normals, a group of pati
ents with frontal lesions, and a group of patients with left posterior
brain lesions. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that normal
s classify the word problems according to principles that are essentia
l for problem solving. These analyses also reveal that the general sor
ting dimensions of the frontal and the left posterior brain-damaged gr
oups, as measured by a multidimensional scaling procedure, are similar
. Cluster analysis shows that both groups base their sorting behavior
mainly on superficial text characteristics, such as the objects found
in the various word problems. The implications of these differences in
sorting behavior for arithmetical word-problem solving are discussed.