Michelle A Hurst
Biographic Data
| ID | 5760079 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michelle A Hurst |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michelle A |
| FAMILY NAME | Hurst |
| SIGNATURE | HURST M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6076-334X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Continuous and discrete proportion elicit different cognitive strategies
Despite proportional information being ubiquitous, there is not a standard account of proportional reasoning. Part of the difficulty is that there are several apparent contradictions: in some contexts, proportion is easy and privileged, while in others it is difficult and ignored. One possibility is that although we see similarities across tasks requiring proportional reasoning, people approach them with different strategies. We test this hypothe…
Children's understanding of most is dependent on context
Children struggle with the quantifier "most". Often, this difficulty is attributed to an inability to interpret most proportionally, with children instead relying on absolute quantity comparisons. However, recent research in proportional reasoning more generally has provided new insight into children's apparent difficulties, revealing that their overreliance on absolute amount is unique to contexts in which the absolute amount can be counted and …
Connecting symbolic fractions to their underlying proportions using iterative partitioning
Fractions are a challenging mathematics topic for many elementary and middle school students, and even for adults. However, a growing body of developmental research suggests that young children can reason about visually presented proportions, well before fraction instruction, providing insight into how fractions might be introduced to improve learning. We designed a card game to teach first and second grade children ( N = 195, including a raciall…
Giving a larger amount or a larger proportion
Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares absolutely more as being "nicer" than someone who shares proportionally more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate t…
Preschoolers’ number knowledge relates to spontaneous focusing on number for small, but not large, sets
Much research has examined the reciprocal relations between a child's spontaneous focus on number (SFON) in the preschool years and later mathematical achievement. However, this literature relies on several different tasks to assess SFON with distinct task demands, making it unclear to what extent these tasks measure the same underlying construct. Moreover, prior studies have investigated SFON in the context of small sets exclusively, but no work…
Attending to relations
When proportional information is pit against whole number numerical information, children often attend to the whole number information at the expense of proportional information (e.g., indicating 4/9 is greater than 3/5 because 4 > 3). In the current study, we presented younger (3- to 4-year-olds) and older (5- to 6-year-olds) children a task in which the proportional information was presented either continuously (units cannot be counted) or disc…
A systematic investigation of the link between rational number processing and algebra ability
Recent research suggests that fraction understanding is predictive of algebra ability; however, the relative contributions of various aspects of rational number knowledge are unclear. Furthermore, whether this relationship is notation‐dependent or rather relies upon a general understanding of rational numbers (independent of notation) is an open question. In this study, college students completed a rational number magnitude task, procedural arith…
Hope as a Predictor of Academic Performance
This study was designed to assess whether the two subscales of the Hope Scale significantly predict semester grade point average (GPA), over and above American College Test (ACT) scores and Trait Anxiety (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.) The Hope Scale includes two subscales, goal-directed determinism (Agency) and the ability to plan ways to attain goals (Pathway). As predicated, scores on the Hope Scale correlated significantly with s…
Attending to relations
When proportional information is pit against whole number numerical information, children often attend to the whole number information at the expense of proportional information (e.g., indicating 4/9 is greater than 3/5 because 4 > 3). In the current study, we presented younger (3- to 4-year-olds) and older (5- to 6-year-olds) children a task in which the proportional information was presented either continuously (units cannot be counted) or disc…
Connecting symbolic fractions to their underlying proportions using iterative partitioning
Fractions are a challenging mathematics topic for many elementary and middle school students, and even for adults. However, a growing body of developmental research suggests that young children can reason about visually presented proportions, well before fraction instruction, providing insight into how fractions might be introduced to improve learning. We designed a card game to teach first and second grade children ( N = 195, including a raciall…
Giving a larger amount or a larger proportion
Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares absolutely more as being "nicer" than someone who shares proportionally more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate t…
Hope as a Predictor of Academic Performance
This study was designed to assess whether the two subscales of the Hope Scale significantly predict semester grade point average (GPA), over and above American College Test (ACT) scores and Trait Anxiety (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.) The Hope Scale includes two subscales, goal-directed determinism (Agency) and the ability to plan ways to attain goals (Pathway). As predicated, scores on the Hope Scale correlated significantly with s…
Attending to relations
When proportional information is pit against whole number numerical information, children often attend to the whole number information at the expense of proportional information (e.g., indicating 4/9 is greater than 3/5 because 4 > 3). In the current study, we presented younger (3- to 4-year-olds) and older (5- to 6-year-olds) children a task in which the proportional information was presented either continuously (units cannot be counted) or disc…
A systematic investigation of the link between rational number processing and algebra ability
Recent research suggests that fraction understanding is predictive of algebra ability; however, the relative contributions of various aspects of rational number knowledge are unclear. Furthermore, whether this relationship is notation‐dependent or rather relies upon a general understanding of rational numbers (independent of notation) is an open question. In this study, college students completed a rational number magnitude task, procedural arith…
Giving a larger amount or a larger proportion
Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares absolutely more as being "nicer" than someone who shares proportionally more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate t…
Preschoolers’ number knowledge relates to spontaneous focusing on number for small, but not large, sets
Much research has examined the reciprocal relations between a child's spontaneous focus on number (SFON) in the preschool years and later mathematical achievement. However, this literature relies on several different tasks to assess SFON with distinct task demands, making it unclear to what extent these tasks measure the same underlying construct. Moreover, prior studies have investigated SFON in the context of small sets exclusively, but no work…
Children's understanding of most is dependent on context
Children struggle with the quantifier "most". Often, this difficulty is attributed to an inability to interpret most proportionally, with children instead relying on absolute quantity comparisons. However, recent research in proportional reasoning more generally has provided new insight into children's apparent difficulties, revealing that their overreliance on absolute amount is unique to contexts in which the absolute amount can be counted and …
Connecting symbolic fractions to their underlying proportions using iterative partitioning
Fractions are a challenging mathematics topic for many elementary and middle school students, and even for adults. However, a growing body of developmental research suggests that young children can reason about visually presented proportions, well before fraction instruction, providing insight into how fractions might be introduced to improve learning. We designed a card game to teach first and second grade children ( N = 195, including a raciall…
Continuous and discrete proportion elicit different cognitive strategies
Despite proportional information being ubiquitous, there is not a standard account of proportional reasoning. Part of the difficulty is that there are several apparent contradictions: in some contexts, proportion is easy and privileged, while in others it is difficult and ignored. One possibility is that although we see similarities across tasks requiring proportional reasoning, people approach them with different strategies. We test this hypothe…
Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques (4 works) · Arithmetic (2 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (2 works) · Cognition (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works)