title: How feedback improves children's numerical estimation.
abstract: Developmental change in children's number-line estimation has been thought to reveal a categorical logarithmic-to-linear shift in mental representations of number. Some have claimed that the broad and rapid change in estimation patterns that occurs with corrective feedback provides strong evidence for this shift. However, quantitative models of proportion judgment may provide a better account of children's estimation patterns while also predicting broad and rapid change following feedback. Here we test the hypothesis that local corrective feedback provides children with additional reference points, rather than catalyzing a shift to a different mental representation of number. We tested 117 children from several second-grade classrooms in a number-line feedback study. Data indicate that the proportion-judgment framework accounts for individual differences in estimation patterns, and that the effects of feedback are consistent with the unique quantitative predictions of the framework. They do not provide evidence supporting the representational shift hypothesis or, more broadly, for the proposal that cognitive change can occur rapidly at the level of entire mental representations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 207 High St, Middletown, CT, 06459, USA. hbarth@wesleyan.edu.
authors.forename: Hilary
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Barth
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 207 High St, Middletown, CT, 06459, USA.|Department of Child and Adolescent Development, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Slusser
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 207 High St, Middletown, CT, 06459, USA.|Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Shipra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kanjlia
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 207 High St, Middletown, CT, 06459, USA.|MDRC, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 207 High St, Middletown, CT, 06459, USA.|Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Taggart
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 207 High St, Middletown, CT, 06459, USA.|California School of Professional Psychology, Oakland, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chase
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003210:Concept Formation; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011337:Probability Learning; D011340:Problem Solving
keywords: Cognitive development; Mathematical cognition