Effects of imagery representations and question aids in comprehension of geometry texts by elementary school children, junior-highschool and college students

Abstract

Assessed age-related shifts in the role of imagery representations in the geometry problem-solving approaches of 37 rural 6th graders, 39 rural 9th graders, 54 college freshmen, 38 urban 2nd graders, 41 urban 4th graders, and 34 urban 6th graders. In 2 experiments, a series of causal modeling analyses, imagery rotation and several other measures of geometry skill were used as predictors of comprehension-monitoring activities of the students when they read word problems of axis- and point symmetry. In Exp 1, close causal relationship was obtained for younger students, as compared to the cases of older ones, between their abilities to rotate imagery representations and efficiency in monitoring their own problem solving activities. In Exp 2, similar results were obtained for 6th but not for 4th graders. Partial support was found for the hypothesis that older students prefer linguistic representations (question aids) rather than relying on imagery. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)