Electrophysiological studies in adults (Jeanne Bagnoud – Equipe Cognition visuelle Unige, Dr Nicolas Burra)
The nature of the representations constructed by individuals to solve arithmetic word problem still needs to be studied. Based on our previous works, we hypothesize that mental models are constructed by expert solvers during problem solving. This theory stands in opposition with the schema theory, assuming that problems are solved through the activation of abstract schemas from long-term memory. In order to further test our hypothesis, we record the electro-physiological brain activity of adults using EEG and we predict that, depending on the context of the problem, different level of mental imagery should be observed.
