A comparative study of cognitive processes in students with deep versus superficial knowledge on interpreting graphs of mathematical functions based on Event-Related Potential

The purpose of this study is to compare the cognitive processes and abilities of two groups of students by using and analyzing event-related potentials (ERPs) during solving problems on interpretation of the graph of functions.

The research method was quantitative and quasi-experimental. The participants of this study were 177 male undergrad engineering students. By the researcher-made mathematics test, participants were divided into two groups of deep conceptual and procedural knowledge (DK) group and superficial conceptual and procedural knowledge (SK) group. Fourteen students were randomly chosen from each group and taken the task and ERPs recording experiment.

The DK group responded more accurately than the SK group. However, the reaction time of the two groups did not show significant variations. The ERP findings demonstrated that the amplitude of the P300 component for the SK group was considerably higher than that of the DK group over central, centro-parietal and parietal brain areas at the question window.

Although behavioral data in the reaction time of between two groups was almost identical, electrophysiological data indicated that doing the interpretation tasks in the SK group would have higher demands and activated further processing brain resources. Also, according to ERPs data, it was determined that the difference between the cognitive processing of the two groups occurs in the first stage and after seeing the graph of the function. These results point to the crucial role of cognitive neuroscientific technics in providing information on the differences in the cognitive performance of different individuals.