Disfluent fonts do not help people to solve math and non-math problems regardless of their numeracy
Sirota, Theodoropoulou and Juanchich start from earlier suggestions that perceptual disfluency activates analytical processing and increases solution rates on problems with appealing but incorrect answers, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test, although a recent meta-analysis does not support this. They test whether insufficient numerical ability explains the discrepancy and find strong evidence against a disfluency effect on solution rates for numerical and verbal problems regardless of numeracy, even though simple instructions to reflect raised solution rates for the verbal problems.
Sirota, Theodoropoulou and Juanchich start from earlier suggestions that perceptual disfluency activates analytical processing and increases solution rates on problems with appealing but incorrect answers, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test, although a recent meta-analysis does not support this. They test whether insufficient numerical ability explains the discrepancy and find strong evidence against a disfluency effect on solution rates for numerical and verbal problems regardless of numeracy, even though simple instructions to reflect raised solution rates for the verbal problems.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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doi:10.1080/13546783.2020.1759689 https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2020.1759689 (updated meta-analysis of 18 comparisons: Hedges' g of minus 0.01).