Many students' knowledge of fractions is adversely affected by whole number bias, the tendency to focus on the separate whole number components (numerator and denominator) of a fraction rather than on the fraction's magnitude (ratio of numerator to denominator). Although whole number bias appears early in the fraction learning process and under…

Many students' knowledge of fractions is adversely affected by whole number bias, the tendency to focus on the separate whole number components (numerator and denominator) of a fraction rather than on the fraction's integrated magnitude (ratio of numerator to denominator). Although whole number bias appears early in the fraction learning process…

The authors examined developmental and individual differences in pure numerical estimation, the type of estimation that depends solely on knowledge of numbers. Children between kindergarten and 4th grade were asked to solve 4 types of numerical estimation problems: computational, numerosity, measurement, and number line. In Experiment 1,…