Psychological Development and Education ›› 2016, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (4): 385-393.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2016.04.01

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The Performance of Proportional Reasoning Strategies of Children in grade 4 to 6 under Different Types of Tasks

LAI Yinghui1,3, YIN Chenxin2, CHEN Yinghe3   

  1. 1. The Teaching and Research Office of Education and Psychology, Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, Beijing, 100191;
    2. Buji Middle School, Shenzhen, 518172;
    3. The Institution of Development Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875
  • Online:2016-07-15 Published:2016-07-15

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Abstract: This study investigated the developmental characteristics of children's proportional reasoning in general domain by balance scale task. Eighty-six 4th to 6th graders in a primary school from Beijing were chosen. The results indicated: (1) Children used support strategies to help them represent problems. They use finger strategy to process basic information of numbers, and this strategy decreased with age. Children in grade 5 began to use think aloud protocol, which showed the development of children's metacognition; (2) Before the formal education of proportional reasoning, the children can use more than two kinds of strategies, and they can develop new strategies automatically. Children can use qualitative proportional reasoning strategies (two-dimensional strategy, compensatory strategy, IIIA strategy). It means that children recognized the co-variation of distance and weight. In addition, children in grade 6 used buggy strategy in conflict problems. With the buggy strategy they transferred complicated tasks into simple tasks. (3) The characteristic of children's wrong strategies were as follows: using compensatory strategy blindly in conflict circumstances, or using simple strategies and additive strategies to solve conflict tasks. (4) Hierarchical regression analysis shows that, after controlling age, the children with higher general reasoning ability depend less on weight strategy, and they use more distance strategy and the buggy strategy. In addition, the general reasoning ability positively predicts the correct times of the conflict problems.

Key words: children, proportional reasoning, strategy development, the balance scale task

CLC Number: 

  • B844

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