London, April 10 (Inditop) Although fractions seem difficult to master, the adult brain, without conscious thought, processes them in a jiffy, according to a new study.
The study suggest that adults have an intuitive understanding of fractions. This may aid in the development of new teaching techniques.
“Fractions are often considered a major stumbling block in math education,” said Daniel Ansari of the University of Western Ontario, an expert on numerical cognition in children and adults.
“This new study challenges the notion that children must undergo a qualitative shift in order to understand fractions and use them in calculations,” Ansari said.
Study authors Simon Jacob and Andreas Nieder, University of T�bingen in Germany, scanned the brains of adult participants as they watched fractions flashed on a screen.
They used functional MRI adaptation (fMRA) to identify brain regions that adapt – or show decreased activity – to the same stimulus presented over and over again.
When the researchers rapidly and repeatedly presented study participants with fractions that equalled approximately 1/6, they found decreased activation in those parts of the brain that are important for processing whole numbers.
Then, the researchers showed the participants fractions that deviated from 1/6. The more the fraction differed from 1/6, the greater the activity in these parts of the brain.
The rapid presentation of each fraction and small variations in fraction value ensured that study participants directly processed the fractions, rather than calculating their values, said a T�bingen release.
“These experiments change the way we should think about fractions,” says the study author Jacob.
“We have shown that our highly-trained brains represent fractions intuitively, a result that could influence the teaching of arithmetic and mathematics in schools,” he said.
