Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Many students fail to develop adequate understanding ofmathematical equivalence in early grades, with detrimentalconsequences for later algebra learning. The changeresistance account (McNeil, 2014) proposes that studentsstruggle with equivalence because traditional arithmeticpractice overexposes students to mathematical expressionswhere all the operators are on the left of the equal sign.Students erroneously believe the equal sign means to “dosomething” or “give the answer” – and fail to see equations asrelations between two expressions. These operations-basedmisconceptions affect how they perceive, conceptualize, andapproach math problems and interfere with developingcorrect understandings of equivalence. The current paperexplores 1) are these misconceptions evident as encodingerrors in second graders? 2) do item properties make specificerror types more or less likely? 3) do misconceptions inencoding impact solving performance? and 4) can targetedtraining mitigate the effects of prior misconceptions on bothequation encoding and solving? We identify a category ofmisconception-based encoding errors that negatively impactsequation solving and replicate findings that a conceptuallyrich research-based intervention program is maximallyeffective in training students to overcome problematicmisconceptions.