Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Understanding and using symbolic fractions in mathematics is critical for access to advanced STEM concepts. However, children and adults consistently struggle with fractions. Here, we take a novel perspective on symbolic fractions, considering them within the framework of relational structures in cognitive psychology, such as those studied in analogy research.
Adults and children alike struggle with fractions, but it also turns out that learning fractions is vitally important for later math skills. Our lab has suggested that children’s ability to learn fractions might build on a more basic perceptual ability to see and understand non-symbolic ratios, which has been demonstrated even in non-human primates.
Approximately 1 in 20 people experience a kind of “mixing of the senses”, known as synesthesia. In the type of synesthesia we are investigating here, “grapheme‐color synesthesia” letters and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes) automatically and involuntarily elicit color experiences (top section). This type of synesthesia affects approximately 1% of the population.
One of the key ways that we make sense of numbers is by creating a “mental number line”. Previous research with whole numbers has demonstrated that (at least in Western cultures) small numbers are thought of as being on the left side of space, and large numbers on the right.
This summer, three students from Lawrence University exchanged the Fox River for Lake Mendota and became temporary Badgers. They were part of a pilot program designed to provide Lawrence undergraduates the opportunity to work with researchers at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. With support from grants from Lawrence University, Katie Taber, Anna Kim and …
Title: Perceptual Ratio Processing Predicts Fractions Skills Legend: (Lay): College students were asked to decide which of two ratios were larger (examples in a-d) that were presented for 1.5 seconds. We show that people who were better at this perceptual task also performed better on four tasks involving symbolic fractions: comparing symbolic fractions (e.g., saying …
