Do Adults Treat Equivalent Fractions Equally? Adults' Strategies and Errors during Fraction Reasoning

Understanding fraction magnitudes is important for achievement and in daily life. However, adults' fraction reasoning sometimes appears to reflect whole number bias and other times reflects accurate reasoning. In the current experiments, we examined how contextual factors and individual differe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition Vol. 46; no. 11; pp. 2049 - 2074
Main Authors Fitzsimmons, Charles J, Thompson, Clarissa A, Sidney, Pooja G
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published American Psychological Association 01.11.2020
Subjects
Adults
Cognitive Processes
Computation
Executive Function
Fractions
Holistic Approach
Individual Differences
Inhibition
Knowledge Level
Logical Thinking
Mathematical Concepts
Mathematical Logic
Time
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Summary:Understanding fraction magnitudes is important for achievement and in daily life. However, adults' fraction reasoning sometimes appears to reflect whole number bias and other times reflects accurate reasoning. In the current experiments, we examined how contextual factors and individual differences in executive functioning (Experiment 1), knowledge of fraction equivalence (both experiments), and strategy use (Experiment 2) influenced adults' fraction reasoning. Adults were only biased by fraction components when reasoning about fractions as holistic magnitudes was difficult: when estimating under a time constraint, when estimating fractions with large components, or when comparing fractions close in decimal distance. However, adults' knowledge of fraction equivalence moderated the effects of whole number components on their fraction estimation performance: when modeled at low levels of equivalence knowledge, adults were biased by fraction components when estimating. Adults with more knowledge of fraction equivalence were able to reason about fractions as holistic magnitudes through adaptive strategy choices.
ISSN:0278-7393
DOI:10.1037/xlm0000839