This study tested the hypothesis that intuitions about the effect of operations, e.g., "addition makes bigger" and "division makes smaller", are still present in educated adults, even after years of instruction. To establish the intuitive character, we applied a reaction time methodology, grounded in dual process theories of reasoning. Educated…

Rational numbers and particularly fractions are difficult for students. It is often claimed that the "natural number bias" underlies erroneous reasoning about rational numbers. This cross-sectional study investigated the natural number bias in first and fifth year secondary school students. Relying on dual process theory assumptions that…

Recent studies have shown that the interpretation of graphs is not always easy for students. In order to reason properly about distributions of data, however, one needs to be able to interpret graphical representations of these distributions correctly. In this study, we used Tversky's principles for the design of graphs to explain how 125…