ERIC Number: EJ1246392
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Apr
Pages: 7
Abstractor: As Provided
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ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
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Experimental Bias in Number-Line Tasks and How to Avoid Them: Comment on Kim and Opfer (2017) and the Introduction of the Cohen Ray Number-Line Task
Cohen, Dale J.; Ray, Austin
Developmental Psychology, v56 n4 p846-852 Apr 2020
Kim and Opfer (2017) report data that demonstrate children produce a negatively accelerating (e.g., logarithmic) response pattern in the unbounded number-line task. This pattern of results is the opposite of those generally reported for the unbounded number-line task (e.g., Cohen & Blanc-Goldhammer, 2011; Cohen & Sarnecka, 2014). We believe Kim and Opfer's (2017) experimental procedure inadvertently biased participants' data in the unbounded task. Here, we (a) outline the factors that induce experimental bias in computerized number-line tasks, (b) identify the likely source of experimental bias in Kim and Opfer (2017) that led to the negatively accelerating pattern of data, (c) introduce a new number-line variation (the universal number-line task), and (d) introduce a publicly available, open source number-line task that provides researchers with a simple, robust, and correct method for collecting data on the unbounded, bounded, and universal number-line tasks. We conclude that Kim and Opfer's (2017) implementation of the unbounded number-line is biased, and therefore cannot provide meaningful support for the log-to-linear shift hypothesis. [For the original article, "A Unified Framework for Bounded and Unbounded Numerical Estimation," see EJ1142527.]
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
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Language: English
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