Summary Of Hardiman, Pollatsek, And Well

Hardiman, Pollatsek, and Well (1986) suggest children’s ability to reason proportionally using the balance beam is not central to rule acquisitions discovered by Seigler (1978). Hardiman, Pollatsek, and Well (1986) examined how the number of weights and its distance influenced participant’s decisions to predict if the beam would balance or not. Researchers believed a product-moment rule is required to enhance proportional reasoning skills in children. The product-moment rule deviates from the four rules set by Seigler (1978) as children considered the physical quantities and distance of the product to make a prediction of where to place weights to balance the beam. Hardiman, Pollatsek, and Well (1986) demonstrated that the force acting on the