Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous studies examining the mental representations of fractions have focused on fractions with magnitudes less thanone (e.g., 2/3). In the current study, we examine the mental representations of fractions with magnitudes greater than one,specifically those of improper fractions. Participants were asked to make magnitude comparisons of these improper frac-tions to a reference that was in an improper fraction, a mixed fraction, or a decimal format. Results show that magnitudesof improper fractions were more accurately accessed when they were compared to mixed fractions and decimals. Thissuggests that the reinterpretation of these improper fractions benefited magnitude processing. Distance effects on errorrate and response time were observed for all three reference formats and more consistently took the form of a Welfordfunction, which predicts worse performance above rather than below the reference. Possible explanations of these resultsare discussed.