Confident or Familiar? The Role of Familiarity Ratings in Adults’ Confidence Judgements When Estimating Fraction Magnitudes

Charles J. Fitzsimmons, C. A. Thompson, P. Sidney

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Understanding fraction magnitudes is especially important in daily life, but fraction reasoning is quite difficult. To accurately reason about fraction magnitudes, adults need to monitor what they know and what they do not know. However, little is known about which cues adults use to monitor fraction performance. Across two studies, we examined adults’ trial-by-trial fraction estimates, confidence judgments, and ratings of fraction familiarity. Adults were more confident when their estimates were more precise as well as when estimating fractions they rated as more familiar. However, adults judged their confidence in estimating fraction magnitudes, in part, based on their familiarity with each fraction. The role familiarity cues play in judgments of confidence with fractions suggests that people may be less likely to check for errors when reasoning about highly-familiar fractions.
Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)215-231
Number of pages17
JournalMetacognition and Learning
Volume15
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Fractions
  • Metacognition
  • Cofidence judgments
  • Whole number bias
  • Familiarity
  • Cue utilization

Disciplines

  • Social and Behavioral Sciences
  • Psychology

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