The influence of semantic alignment on the performance of addition and division operation: age-related differences

Semantic alignment refers to the cognitive tendency that people always seek for the matching of semantic relations between mathematical cognition and objects in specific situations. In developing individuals, language ability and mathematical ability are in the development stage, and the development of semantic consistency is more helpful to reveal the relationship between the two. From the perspective of semantic alignment, this study aims to explore the age-related difference in the effects of semantic relationship on arithmetic operations. Sixty-two children and 62 adults were recruited to perform an arithmetical verification task. The results showed that: (1) Compared with children, adults had shorter response times and higher accuracy in mathematical operations. (2) Both adults and children showed longer response times in division condition than that in addition condition. (3) Children are more affected by semantic alignment than adults in addition. (4) For addition operation, participants performed better under semantic consistent condition than under semantic inconsistent condition, but the opposite result was found for division operation. It indicated that semantic consistently promoted the addition operation and semantic inconsistently promoted the division operation. This suggests that teachers should pay attention to integrating mathematical conceptual knowledge and language context in future educational practice.