How do first-grade students recognize patterns? An eye-tracking study

Abstract

Recognizing patterns is an important skill in early mathematics learning. Yet only few studies have investigated how first-grade students recognize patterns. These studies mainly analyzed students’ expressions and drawings in individual interviews. The study presented in this paper used eye tracking in order to explore the processes of 22 first-grade students while they were trying to recognize repeating patterns. In our study, we used numerical and color pattern tasks with three different repeating patterns (i.e., repeating unit is AB, ABC, or AABB). For each repeating pattern task, students were asked to say the following object of the given pattern. For these patterns, we identified four different processes in recognizing repeating patterns. In addition, we report differences in the observed processes between the patterns used in the tasks.