Research on mathematical problem solving has a long tradition: retracing its fascinating story sheds light on its intricacies and, therefore, on its needs. When we analyze this impressive literature, a critical issue emerges clearly, namely, the presence of words and expressions having many and sometimes opposite meanings. Significant examples are the terms ‘realistic’ and ‘modeling’ associated with word problems in school. Understanding how these terms are used is important in research, because this issue relates to the design of several studies and to the interpretation of a large number of phenomena, such as the well-known phenomenon of students’ suspension of sense making when they solve mathematical problems. In order to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon, we describe a large empirical and qualitative study focused on the effects of variations in the presentation (text, picture, format) of word problems on students’ approaches to these problems. The results of our study show that the phenomenon of suspension of sense making is more precisely a phenomenon of activation of alternative kinds of sense making: the different kinds of active sense making appear to be strongly affected by the presentation of the word problem.

关于数学问题解决的研究具有悠久的历史：追溯其迷人的故事揭示了它的复杂性，因此也说明了它的需求。当我们分析这些令人印象深刻的文学作品时，一个明显的问题就显而易见了，那就是存在具有很多甚至有时相反含义的单词和表达。重要的例子是与学校单词问题相关的“现实”和“建模”。理解如何使用这些术语在研究中很重要，因为该问题与多项研究的设计以及对大量现象的解释有关，例如众所周知的学生中止思维的现象。当他们解决数学问题时。为了加深我们对这种现象的理解，我们描述了一项大型的实证研究，重点研究了单词问题的表述（文字，图片，格式）变化对学生解决这些问题的方式的影响。我们的研究结果表明，意义上的中止现象更确切地说是一种替代意义上的意义上的激活现象：主动式意义上的不同种类似乎受到单词问题的呈现的强烈影响。