TY - JOUR
T1 - Number Lines Can Be More Effective at Facilitating Adults’ Performance on Health-Related Ratio Problems Than Risk Ladders and Icon Arrays
AU - Mielicki, Marta K.
AU - Fitzsimmons, Charles J.
AU - Schiller, Lauren K.
AU - Scheibe, Dan
AU - Taber, Jennifer M.
AU - Sidney, Pooja G.
AU - Matthews, Percival G.
AU - Waters, Erika A.
AU - Coifman, Karin G.
AU - Thompson, Clarissa A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Visual displays, such as icon arrays and risk ladders, are often used to communicate numerical health information. Number lines improve reasoning with rational numbers but are seldom used in health contexts. College students solved ratio problems related to COVID-19 (e.g., number of deaths and number of cases) in one of four randomly assigned conditions: icon arrays, risk ladders, number lines, or no accompanying visual display. As predicted, number lines facilitated performance on these problems—the number line condition outperformed the other visual display conditions, which did not perform any better than the no visual display condition. In addition, higher performance on the health-related ratio problems was associated with higher COVID-19 worry for oneself and others, higher perceptions of COVID-19 severity, and higher endorsement of intentions to engage in preventive health behaviors, even when controlling for baseline math skills. These findings have important implications for effectively presenting health statistics.
AB - Visual displays, such as icon arrays and risk ladders, are often used to communicate numerical health information. Number lines improve reasoning with rational numbers but are seldom used in health contexts. College students solved ratio problems related to COVID-19 (e.g., number of deaths and number of cases) in one of four randomly assigned conditions: icon arrays, risk ladders, number lines, or no accompanying visual display. As predicted, number lines facilitated performance on these problems—the number line condition outperformed the other visual display conditions, which did not perform any better than the no visual display condition. In addition, higher performance on the health-related ratio problems was associated with higher COVID-19 worry for oneself and others, higher perceptions of COVID-19 severity, and higher endorsement of intentions to engage in preventive health behaviors, even when controlling for baseline math skills. These findings have important implications for effectively presenting health statistics.
KW - Health decision making
KW - Number lines
KW - Numerical cognition
KW - Visual displays
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85149632683&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/xap0000456
DO - 10.1037/xap0000456
M3 - Article
C2 - 36326639
AN - SCOPUS:85149632683
SN - 1076-898X
JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
ER -