ArticleCognition2021
Failure to replicate the benefit of approximate arithmetic training for symbolic arithmetic fluency in adults.
Article in Cognition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Non-Symbolic Magnitude Processing Is a Strong Correlate of Symbolic Math Skills in Children From Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Distinct neural representational changes following cross-format number tutoring in children with mathematical difficulties.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- Origins of numbers: a shared language-of-thought for arithmetic and geometry?Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Predicting individual differences in preschoolers' numeracy and geometry knowledge: The role of understanding abstract relations between objects and quantities.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2024Article
- Trend judgment as a perceptual building block of graphicacy and mathematics, across age, education, and culture.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Electrophysiological Signatures of Numerosity Encoding in a Delayed Match-to-Sample Task.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Article
- Testing the role of symbols in preschool numeracy: An experimental computer-based intervention study.PloS one · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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 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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.