Our new article describing how individual differences in perceptual ratio processing relate to college student’s math abilities (especially fractions) is now out in Psychological Science.
Matthews, P.G. Lewis, M.R. and Hubbard, E.M. (2015). Individual Differences in Nonsymbolic Ratio Processing Predict Symbolic Math Performance, Psychological Science, first published on December 28, 2015 as doi:10.1177/0956797615617799
In this article, we lay out a theory for the perceptual foundations of fraction processing, based on a basic system for non-symbolic ratio processing, which we dub the “ratio processing system” (RPS), by analogy with the approximate number system (ANS). We test a key prediction of this account by showing that individual differences in RPS precision relate to higher-order math skills, including fractions processing, and strikingly, even algebra skills!