The Effects of Logo Experience on First-Grade Children's Ability to Estimate Distance

This study investigated the effect of learning Logo on first-grade children's understanding of length of measure under the condition of changing unit size. Twenty-three children received Logo instruction for one hour per week between October and early April. An Estimation of Distance task was administered to these children and to twenty-five first graders who had no Logo experience. The children understood that, for a given unit size, as the magnitude of the distance increased, the number of units associated with that distance would also increase. However, the children who had Logo instruction were significantly more accurate in estimating distance. All of the children understood that there was a compensating relationship between unit size and the number of units, but the distance estimations of the children who had Logo instruction were more reflective of the strength of the inverse relationship between unit size and number.