Page 86 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

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Chapter 3
found verbal updating to play a more important role than visuospatial updating in the mathematical problem-solving of third grade children (7-8 years old).
Overall, updating is most frequently identified as a significant predictor of mathematical problem-solving performance and thus children’s ability to update, hold, and manipulate information deemed to be essential. Verbal updating is judged to be of particular importance for grade 4 children. Not all studies distinguish between visuospatial and verbal updating, however. And the findings regarding inhibition and shifting in relation to child’s mathematical problem-solving are less consistent than those for updating. It should be noted that when both updating and inhibition were examined in the same study, updating played a more prominent role in the children’s mathematical problem-solving (Wiley & Jarosz, 2012).
Relationships between visuospatial and verbal updating, inhibition, and shifting and mathematical problem-solving performance and development in grade 4 are not yet clear. Most of the relevant research has included only young children and only simple as opposed to more complex mathematical problems. Very little is known about the direct and indirect contributions of executive functioning and arithmetic fluency to mathematical problem-solving in grade 4 when the degree of mathematical complexity and abstraction increases.
The present study
To date, the vast majority of studies have been directed at performance in mathematical problem-solving, not at changes over time (development), and most studies have not included the executive functions of visuospatial and verbal updating, inhibition, and shifting. There is a marked need for further understanding of the direct and indirect contributions of executive functioning to mathematical problem-solving in grade 4 to extend previous research. The present study therefore takes the following into account when studying performance and development of children’s mathematical problem- solving abilities: a) the specific roles of visuospatial and verbal updating, inhibition, and shifting (i.e., aspects of their executive functioning) in their mathematical problem-solving and b) the possibly mediating role