Real-world estimation taps into basic numeric abilities

Abstract

Accurately estimating and assessing real-world quantities (e.g., how long it will take to get to the train station; the calorie content of a meal) is a central skill for adaptive cognition. To date, theoretical and empirical work on the mental resources recruited by real-world estimation has focused primarily on the role of domain knowledge (e.g., knowledge of the metric and distributional properties of objects in a domain). Here we examined the role of basic numeric abilities – specifically, symbolic-number mapping – in real-world estimation. In Experiment 1 (N=286) and Experiment 2 (N=592), participants first completed a country-population estimation task (a task domain commonly used to study real-world estimation) and then completed a number-line task (an approach commonly used to measure symbolic-number mapping). In both experiments, participants with better performance in the number-line task made more accurate estimates in the estimation task. Moreover, Experiment 2 showed that performance in the number-line task predicts estimation accuracy independently of domain knowledge. Further, in Experiment 2 the association between estimation accuracy and symbolic-number mapping did not depend on whether the number-line task involved small numbers (up to 1000) or large numbers that matched the range of the numbers in the estimation task (up to 100,000,000). Our results show for the first time that basic numeric abilities contribute to the estimation of real-world quantities. We discuss implications for theories of real-world estimation and for interventions aiming to improve people’s ability to estimate real-world quantities.