The Effects of Word-Learning Biases on Children's Concept of Angle.
Despite evidence that young children are sensitive to differences in angle measure, older students frequently struggle to grasp this important mathematical concept. When making judgments about the size of angles, children often rely on erroneous dimensions such as the length of the angles' sides. Th...
| Published in: | Child Development Vol. 86; no. 1; pp. 319 - 327 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Jan/Feb2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=100988934&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 100988934 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00093920 CDV jtl: Child Development issn: 00093920 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jan/Feb2015 vid: 86 iid: 1 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 100988934 10.1111/cdev.12286 ppf: 319 ppct: 8 formats: tig: atl: The Effects of Word-Learning Biases on Children's Concept of Angle. aug: au: Gibson, Dominic J. Congdon, Eliza L. Levine, Susan C. affil: University of Chicago su: Preschool children Categorization (Psychology) Angles Comprehension in children Visual perception Geometry education in elementary schools Geometric shapes Mathematical errors Pre-tests & post-tests sug: subj: Preschool children Categorization (Psychology) Angles Comprehension in children Visual perception Geometry education in elementary schools Geometric shapes Mathematical errors Pre-tests & post-tests ab: Despite evidence that young children are sensitive to differences in angle measure, older students frequently struggle to grasp this important mathematical concept. When making judgments about the size of angles, children often rely on erroneous dimensions such as the length of the angles' sides. The present study tested the possibility that this misconception stems from the whole-object word-learning bias by providing a subset of children with a separate label to refer to the whole angle figure. Thirty preschoolers ( M = 4.86 years, SD = .53) were tested with a pretest-training-posttest design. At pretest, children showed evidence of the whole-object misconception. After training, children who were given a novel-word label for the whole object improved significantly more than those trained on the meaning of 'angle' alone. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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