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Less than half of U.S. children in the fourth grade and eighth grade tested as proficient (or higher) in mathematics this year, according to the recent results of the . Only 39% of fourth graders and only 28% of eighth graders performed “at or above the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) proficient level on the mathematics assessment.” 

Clarissa A. Thompson, Ph.D., professor of in the Department of Psychological Sciences at ����ɫ��ҹ University, and her team have worked to improve this statistic and make learning math more efficient and accessible. 

She is being awarded the 2025 American Psychological Association (APA) award for . This award is in recognition of her research in the domain of cognitive development and “evidence-based applications of psychology to education.”

Thompson’s passion for psychology led her to pursue her Ph.D. in Developmental and Cognitive Psychology in 2008 at The Ohio State University under the supervision of John Opfer, Ph.D. From there, she spent two years at Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoctoral research associate working with Robert Siegler, Ph.D. Then, she joined the University of Oklahoma in 2010 as an assistant professor, where she coordinated the Elements of Psychology Program and began training graduate students to learn how to teach psychology content for the first time. She joined the ����ɫ��ҹ Department of Psychological Sciences in 2014, where she was eventually tenured and promoted to full professor. She now also serves as co-director of the Science of Learning and Education Center (SOLE) and the chair of the ����ɫ��ҹ University Institutional Review Board. 

In May 2022, the SOLE Center hosted an NSF-funded NUMBERs workshop. They invited math cognition researchers and their trainees to ����ɫ��ҹ to learn about cutting-edge interventions in math cognition.

Thompson’s Research and Applications 
This award comes after 20 years of Thompson’s accomplished career researching how children and adults learn, specifically how they learn and process math. Her research aids teaching in early education by examining how different visual displays, specifically the number line, and analogies to children’s relevant prior knowledge can help them estimate numbers more accurately. 

“The number line estimation task is this bread-and-butter task that we use in a lot of our experiments,” Thompson explained. “It was through that push [adoption of the 2010 Common Core State Standards for Mathematics] that researchers and policymakers really made it clear how helpful number lines can be to help people understand math. So now you see number lines mentioned in the state standards for math. You see number lines more in textbooks than you ever have previously. So, we're continuing to do research to show that number lines relative to other types of visual displays help people understand numerical information better.”

Thompson’s research also helps adults gain a better understanding of statistics, which was demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We noticed that people were not understanding the COVID-19 case fatality rate statistics,” Thompson said. “Early on in the pandemic, they were just looking at the number of deaths and concluding that not a lot of people were dying from COVID as compared to the seasonal flu, so COVID-19 must not be as fatal as the flu. But they weren't taking into account the fact that you have to think about how many people are infected relative to how many people die. Rational numbers, like fractions, decimals, and percentages are critical to people’s understanding of health and finance statistics (to name just a few).” 

Why Math Changes 
Thompson also explained how important research in math cognition is, and why applying psychology research to educational contexts must continue to evolve to help improve children’s math comprehension. 

Thompson recognizes that the persistent change in the way math is taught can be frustrating to parents who sit down to help their child with their homework, only to find that the math their child is learning is different from the math that they learned. 

“One thing I think that's interesting is this perception that the Common Core, or the new math, is considered the bad guy,” Thompson said. “Some parents say ‘I don't know how to do the new math when I'm working with my child. Why do the kids need to learn this newfangled way of solving math problems?’ But I think the basic premise behind it is so important, and I'd love to get that message out. It's not just about knowing the procedures or the step-by-step method of how to do a math problem, but the why behind it.”

While it can be frustrating or confusing, it is a necessary part of the process. As Thompson explains, learning math is not simply about understanding a procedure to get an answer to a question, but also understanding why you used the procedure that you did. Being able to understand the “why” behind the process is just as important as understanding the “how.”

Psychologists like Thompson get into research not just to study an interesting topic, but to learn how to help people. Cognitive development researchers hope that educators, parents, and students benefit from their work.  

Thompson’s Academic Journey 
Thompson began her psychology and education journey at a young age when she first noticed that some children process information faster and easier than others.

“Just being in an elementary classroom and recognizing that the teacher would group folks, and they would call this the 'A group,’ and you would notice that all those kids get A’s, or the 'B group’ and all those kids get pretty good grades but not A’s every time.” Thompson said. “How is it that some students learn easily and fluidly, and others have so much trouble?”

Thompson began her research early on, testing her theories on her very first student—her younger brother, Casey. 

“I had a little chalkboard in my room, and I would teach him math and cursive and spelling,” Thompson recalled. “I even kept a grade book for him, which I'm sure he did not love at all. I feel like I had this passion for teaching and learning from a very young age. So, when I was in high school and had the opportunity to take a psychology class for the first time, it really resonated with me.”

As her career developed, Thompson found herself applying to become a faculty member at ����ɫ��ҹ specifically to join a community of world-famous researchers who specialized in cognition and education research. 

“The job here... it's just been amazing. Collaboration is my favorite part of science.” Thompson said. “I was brought in to work with Dr. John Dunlosky and Dr. Katherine Rawson, who are experts in their field. To be in a department where people were doing education research at this level has been so inspiring.”

Upon receiving the award from APA, Thompson was grateful to her nominators, Drs. Pooja Sidney (University of Kentucky), Martha Alibali (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Nora Newcombe (Temple University), but struggled with feeling like she deserved it. As she processed the award and what it meant to her, Thompson expressed that students need to know that even their professors deal with imposter syndrome from time-to-time.

“It's something that many of our colleagues fight with.” Thompson stated. “Even seeing that nomination was like, oh, do I really deserve this? Maybe I was the only person who was nominated this year? This kind of negative self-talk. But then, as I'm sitting here describing to you these accomplishments, I realized that the research that my colleagues and I have conducted is a crucial stepping stone for the next generation of researchers in the discipline—but I think it's humbling to show that even full professors have impostor syndrome now and then.”

Thompson hopes her work will continue to push education forward to make “new math” ever more efficient and accessible, for children and adults alike.

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