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Poster #35 - Is Batman good at math? The Self-Distancing Effect on the Approximate Number System

Fri, March 22, 2:30 to 3:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Children possess an intuitive sense of number, known as the Approximate Number System (ANS), that contributes to their developing understanding of math (Halberda, Mazzocco & Feigenson, 2008). Recent work has found that individual differences in the ANS can be improved through extended practice (Park et al., 2016), and targeted scaffolding (Odic, Hock, & Halberda, 2014). Here, we take a different approach, inspired by research in training children’s executive functioning. Previous work has shown that a phenomenon known as the “Batman effect”, or - more formally - self-distancing, broadly improves children’s executive functioning (e.g., White & Carlson, 2016). We hypothesized that self-distancing might also improve children’s ANS, either through 1) a domain-general boosting of cognitive functioning, or 2) a reduction of executive-function-related task demands.

In a preregistered study (N = 40 to date of 90), we examined the effect of self-distancing on children’s ANS performance. Children aged 5 and 6 were asked to do a simple number discrimination task in which they indicated whether there were more yellow or blue dots on a screen. Critically, children were given one of three levels of self-distancing strategies before completing the task, based on White & Carlson (2016): Character (full self-distancing, wearing a cape and pretending to be a superhero who is good at the task), Third-Person (partial self-distancing, referring to the self using a first name), or First-Person (self-immersed, referring to the self as “I”). For example, children in the Character condition were asked to complete the task while asking “Would Batman think that there are more blue or yellow dots?”

Consistent with past work on self-distancing and executive functions, we found that children were more careful when self-distancing, as reflected in lower amounts of guessing in the Character condition (M = 2% of the time) than in the other conditions (Third-Person: 18%, First Person: 30%; F(2, 36) = 3.51, p = .04, ηp2 = .16). However, children’s overall accuracy did not differ statistically by condition (F(2, 38) = 1.43, p = .25), though we do see that accuracy in the Character condition (84%) is numerically higher than in the other two conditions (Third-Person: 78%, First-Person: 81%, ηp2 = .07). Children’s ANS acuity, a psychophysically modelled measure of precision where lower numbers indicate better precision, found the same pattern (Character: M = 0.20, Third-Person: 0.30, First-Person: 0.43; F(2, 36) = 0.82, p = .45, ηp2 = .04).

As it stands, the Batman effect appears to help children focus during the ANS task, replicating the general findings of White & Carlson (2016), but it does not appear to improve their number acuity or their task performance. We take two main points from these findings: 1) that self-distancing selectively improves performance on executive functioning, rather than boosting performance more generally, and 2) that children’s ANS task performance is not significantly improved by alleviating task demands, suggesting that it is a robust measurement of underlying numerical capabilities.

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