Abstract
The association between language and mathematics is an important debated topic. Here, we proposed a structure correspondence hypothesis to explain under what conditions language and mathematics are closely related. According to the hypothesis, there would be an association when they have equivalent structure. One hundred and fifty high school students were recruited to finish mathematical and language tests at the element level (i.e., geometric term processing and word analogy) and at the low-dimensional combination level (i.e., geometric principle processing and sentence completion) as well as the tests to measure cognitive covariates (general intelligence and spatial processing). After controlling for age, gender and cognitive covariates, geometric term processing and word analogy were closely correlated, and geometric principle processing and sentence completion were significantly correlated. No other correlations were found. The results support the structure correspondence hypothesis and provide a new perspective of structure of language and verbalized mathematics for the relation between language and mathematics.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the grant from the 111 Project (Project No. BP0719032); the Natural Science Foundation of China (62277015); and the Science and Technology Project of Hebei Education Department (ZD2020158).
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Impact Statement: This study proposed the structure correspondence hypothesis to explain under what conditions language and mathematics were closely correlated. The research examined examples of mathematics and language at the elemental level (geometric term processing and word analogy) and at the low-dimensional combination level (geometric principle processing and sentence completion) to validate the structure correspondence hypothesis. The results of the study supported the structure correspondence hypothesis, providing a new theoretical perspective for the fundamental scientific question of the relationship between language and mathematics.
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Cui, J., Lv, L., Yang, F. et al. The structure correspondence hypothesis predicts how word and sentence in language correlate with term and principle in mathematics. Cogn Process 25, 305–319 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-023-01170-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-023-01170-0