Assessing the Approximate Number System: no relation between numerical comparison and estimation tasks

in Psychological Research (2015)

Whether our general numerical skills and the mathematical knowledge that we acquire at school are entwined is a debated issue, which many researchers are still striving to investigate. The findings ... [more ▼]

Whether our general numerical skills and the mathematical knowledge that we acquire at school are entwined is a debated issue, which many researchers are still striving to investigate. The findings reported in the literature are actually inconsistent; some studies emphasised the existence of a relationship between the acuity of the Approximate Number System (ANS) and arithmetic competence, while some others did not observe any significant correlation. One potential explanation of the discrepancy might stem from the evaluation of the ANS itself. In the present study, we correlated two measures used to index ANS acuity with arithmetic performance. These measures were the Weber fraction (w), computed from a numerical comparison task and the Coefficient of Variation (CV), computed from a numerical estimation task. Arithmetic performance correlated with estimation CV but not with comparison w. We further investigated the meaning of this result by taking the relationship between w and CV into account. We expected a tight relation as both these measures are believed to assess ANS acuity. Crucially however, w and CV did not correlate with each other. Moreover, the value of w was modulated by the congruity of the relation between numerical magnitude and non-numerical visual cues, potentially accounting for the lack of correlation between the measures. Our findings thus challenge the overuse of w to assess ANS acuity and more generally put into question the relevance of correlating this measure with arithmetic without any deeper understanding of what they are really indexing. [less ▲]

Procedural and magnitude-based strategies in solving complex additions: Insights from fMRI

Poster (2013)

Is adding 48 + 25 and 45 + 28 the same? How addend compatibility influences the strategy execution in mental addition.

in Journal of Cognitive Psychology (2012), 24(7), 836-843

A recent study revealed that adults frequently start to add two two-digit numbers from the larger one, suggesting that addend magnitudes are compared at an early stage of processing. However, several ... [more ▼]

A recent study revealed that adults frequently start to add two two-digit numbers from the larger one, suggesting that addend magnitudes are compared at an early stage of processing. However, several studies showed that symbolic number comparison involves compatibility effects: such numerical comparison is easier when the larger number also contains the larger unit (48_25) than in the opposite, incompatible case (45_28). In this context, whether the compatibility between tens and units across operands affects the execution of arithmetic solving strategies remains an open question. In this study, we used two kinds of verbal protocols to assess how addend compatibility influences the implementation of magnitude-based strategies. We observed that participants started their computations from the larger operand more frequently when solving compatible additions than they did when solving incompatible ones. The presence of a compatibility effect extends the view that multi-digit number processing is componential rather than holistic, even in an arithmetic task that did not explicitly require a number magnitude comparison. Further, the findings corroborate the notion that number magnitude is used in mental calculation and influences the way calculation strategies are implemented. [less ▲]

The relation between the acuity of the ANS and general arithmetic performance

Scientific Conference (2012)

A Reinterpretation of the compatibility effects in numeral comparison

Scientific Conference (2012)

Phonological awareness in kindergarten: a field study in Luxembourgish schools

in European Journal of Psychology of Education (2011), 26(1), 109-128

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of a phonological awareness training program in the specific context of the Luxembourgish educational system. The intervention was run by ... [more ▼]

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of a phonological awareness training program in the specific context of the Luxembourgish educational system. The intervention was run by the kindergarten teachers in their classes with minimal external supervision. Forty-one classes of the area around Luxembourg City participated in the study. One hundred and fifty children from 20 kindergarten classes were part of the training group and 157 children from 21 classes formed the control group. At the end of kindergarten, clear training effects were observed for all phonological awareness tasks, except for the highly demanding phoneme deletion task. After 6 months of reading and writing instruction in first grade, no training effects were found in a pseudoword spelling task for the entire training group. Only at-risk children, which had the lowest performance on preschool phonological awareness measures, showed significant training effects. We conclude that early phonological awareness training may be profitably incorporated in kindergarten classroom activities, particularly for at-risk pupils, even when the language characteristics and teaching methods already concur in facilitating the understanding of the alphabetic principle. [less ▲]

Number sense and mathematical expertise: The strategic view.

Poster (2011)

Arithmétique mentale : la comparaison préalable de deux nombres facilite l’addition de ceux-ci.

Poster (2010)

Mental Arithmetic: Eye Movement Correlates of Calculation Strategies

Poster (2009)