The Effect of Irrelevant Background Sound on The Process of Solving Difficult and Simple Mathematical Word Problems for Primary School Students

Liu Nina; Wu Shuqin; Yan Guoli

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230509

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (5) : 1098-1105. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230509

The Effect of Irrelevant Background Sound on The Process of Solving Difficult and Simple Mathematical Word Problems for Primary School Students

Liu Nina¹, Wu Shuqin^1,2, Yan Guoli¹

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Abstract

Mathematical word problems consist of problem representation and the problem solving. It combines with a variety of cognitive processing, such as reading, memory, deduction, integration, problem-solving and so on. Primary school students are easily disturbed by the surrounding things, in which one of main factors is the background sound from the external environment. A large body of research has consistently shown that irrelevant background sounds have seriously interference influence on short-term memory and reading processing (Murphy et al., 2018; Sörqvist, 2010; Yan et al., 2018), namely irrelevant speech effect (ISE). Some of them have indicated that the semantic information in ISE disrupts cognitive processing, while appropriate white noise may facilitate people's relative processing to some extent. However, whether background sounds may influence mathematical word problems for primary school students is still unclear.
Thus, the present study manipulated both the types of background sounds (meaningful speech, meaningless speech, white noise and silence condition) and the difficulty level of word problems (difficult vs. simple). Specifically, the material of meaningful speech is an article extracted from bilingual reading material, which is read by a female college student in Chinese. Meaningless speech is the recording of the same female student reading the same article in Uighur, and the noise material is a 20 minute white noise. Quiet material is a recording in a quiet laboratory. 24 pair of difficult and simple word problems were created according to Mathematics textbook for fourth grade students, in which the simple question only needs one-step calculating while the difficult needs two-step calculating, and there is only one word difference between difficult and simple word question. Moreover, eye tracking technique was used to investigate the real-time ISE in different stages of word problem solving. 35 fifth-grade students were recruited as participants and their eye movements were recording during word problem solving.
The results showed that: (1) The mathematical word problems were disturbed by irrelevant background sound. Compared with the performances in quiet conditions, meaningful speech increased the processing difficulty of word problems, and interfered with the overall problem-solving speed and the late stage of problem-solving. (2) By further comparison with meaningless speech, it is proved that the semantic component in the speech background sound is the main factor accounting for interference. (3) The present study also found that white noise promoted the word problem solving to some extent, which was adjusted by the difficulty of the problem. It mainly facilitates the cognitive processing efficiency when solving difficult problems. In conclusion, the present findings contribute to further understanding the mechanism of ISE and have certain practical value to the teaching and learning of mathematics in primary school.

Key words

irrelevant speech effect / mathematical word problems / primary school students / eye-tracking

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Liu Nina, Wu Shuqin, Yan Guoli. The Effect of Irrelevant Background Sound on The Process of Solving Difficult and Simple Mathematical Word Problems for Primary School Students[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(5): 1098-1105 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230509

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