Individual Differences in the Evolution of Counting.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_3BC0A0933B79
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Individual Differences in the Evolution of Counting.
Journal
Experimental psychology
Author(s)
Dewi JDM, Thevenot C.
ISSN
2190-5142 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
1618-3169
Publication state
Published
Issued date
03/2022
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
69
Number
2
Pages
75-82
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
<b></b> The alphabet-arithmetic paradigm, in which adults are asked to add a numeral addend to a letter augend (e.g., D + 3 = G), was conceived to mimic the way children learn addition. Studies using this paradigm often conclude that procedural learning leads to the memorization of associations between operands and answers. However, as recently suggested, memorization might only be used by a minority of participants and only for problems with the largest addend. In the present paper, we aim at investigating these individual differences through transfer effects from trained problems to new ones. Participants were trained over 12 learning sessions, followed by 3 transfer sessions. A group of participants, that we called the nonbreakers, showed a linear function associating solution times and addends throughout the experiment. In this group, transfer was observed during the first transfer session, suggesting that a procedural strategy, transferable to new items, was still used at the end of training. In another group of participants, that we called the breakers, we observed a decrease in solution times for problems with the largest addend. In this group, transfer was only observed after two transfer sessions, suggesting that procedural strategies were not used as often in this group than in the other group. This was especially true for problems with the largest addend because transfer effects were stronger when they were excluded. Therefore, during learning and for breakers, the answers to problems with larger addends are retrieved first and, as for non-breakers, the answers to problems with very small operands remain computed.
Keywords
Adult, Child, Humans, Individuality, Learning, Mathematics, Problem Solving, arithmetic, counting, retrieval, strategies, transfer
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
24/08/2022 8:55
Last modification date
23/02/2023 7:53
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