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

• Main Authors: Brannon, E.M (Author), Park, J. (Author), Szkudlarek, E. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V. 2021
• Subjects: adult; Adult; Approximate arithmetic; Approximate number system; arithmetic; article; cognition; Cognition; Cognitive training; controlled study; female; human; human experiment; Humans; major clinical study; male; Math; mathematics; Mathematics; Memory, Short-Term; numerical cognition; Numerical cognition; Replication; sample size; short term memory; working memory
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 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 and 4 replicated the original approximate arithmetic training experiments with a larger sample size. Across all four experiments (N = 318) approximate arithmetic training was no more effective at improving the arithmetic fluency of adults than training with control tasks. Results call into question any causal relationship between approximate, non-symbolic arithmetic and precise symbolic arithmetic. © 2020 The Authors