Failure to replicate the benefit of approximate arithmetic training for symbolic arithmetic fluency in adults.

ABSTRACT: Previous research reported that college students' symbolic addition and subtraction fluency improved after training with non-symbolic, approximate addition and subtraction. These findings were widely interpreted as strong support for the hypothesis that the Approximate Number System (ANS) plays a causal role in symbolic mathematics, and that this relation holds into adulthood. Here we report four experiments that fail to find evidence for this causal relation. Experiment 1 examined whether the approximate arithmetic training effect exists within a shorter training period than originally reported (2 vs 6 days of training). Experiment 2 attempted to replicate and compare the approximate arithmetic training effect to a control training condition matched in working memory load. Experiments 3 a

SUBMITTER: Szkudlarek E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7805575 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature