Age of the captain

Under Captain Captain syndrome or symptoms refers to the phenomenon that many learners in mathematics try to word problems - so-called captain duties - to solve, which are factually undeveloped, that is, who do can not be solved using the specified facts. It figures out the task text to be linked regardless of the context with operation signs and specified the calculation result as a solution.

The name Captain syndrome refers to a task for which the study of this phenomenon.

Research results

A working group on elementary education at the Institute de Recherche sur l' Enseignement of Mathématiques ( IREM ) examined from Grenoble children from the second and third grade. She urged the children to answer the following question: " On a ship are 26 sheep and 10 goats. How old is the captain? " 76 of the 97 students surveyed answered the question by being combined and disclosures in the figures given the task in any way a solution to the question, although there are none. This behavior was found in several similarly structured questions.

It was also observed that children led by arithmetic operations even when the solution was already apparent in the question, such as the question " A 27- year-old shepherd has 25 sheep and 10 goats. How old is the shepherd? ". The older the children are, the more often they perform arithmetic operations to master tasks.