Inhibiting intuitive rules in a geometry comparison task: Do age level and math achievement matter?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Geometry Education

Background:

• Many students incorrectly use the intuitive "larger area-larger perimeter" rule for perimeter comparison.
• This intuitive rule is often misleading in geometric reasoning tasks.
• The role of inhibitory control in overcoming such intuitive biases is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the necessity of inhibitory control in perimeter comparison reasoning.
• To examine how inhibitory control efficiency varies with student age and academic achievement.
• To understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying geometry problem-solving.

Main Methods:

• A negative priming paradigm was employed to assess inhibitory control.
• Two experiments were conducted with primary school and college students.
• Participants solved perimeter comparison tasks under varying conditions.

Main Results:

• A negative priming effect, indicating inhibitory control, was observed in both primary and college students.
• The negative priming effect was present in both high-achieving and low-achieving primary students.
• High-achieving students showed a smaller magnitude of the negative priming effect compared to low-achieving students.

Conclusions:

• Successful geometry problem-solving, particularly perimeter comparison, requires inhibiting intuitive but incorrect rules.
• Inhibitory control efficiency is a key factor in overcoming misleading spatial intuitions.
• High-achieving students possess superior inhibitory control, enabling more accurate geometric reasoning.