Self-efficacy and short-term memory capacity as predictors of proportional reasoning

• Short-term memory span and self-efficacy influence proportional reasoning.
• Self-efficacy explained significant variance in proportional reasoning above short-term memory.
• Self-efficacy related to performance for men, but not for women.

This study investigated the influence of self-efficacy and working memory on time-pressured completion of a test of proportional reasoning. Participants completed standard working memory measures of storage as well as storage and transformation (verbal and numerical), reported their self-efficacy with numerical information and attempted a time-restricted numeracy task. The task was composed of problems featuring fractions, percentages and probabilities, which included simple problems requiring mainly memory retrieval, as well as problems that required calculation and operation-switching. While short-term memory and self-efficacy played a role in performance, self-efficacy explained a significant proportion of the variance in performance above and beyond the effects of short-term memory. As similar findings have recently been shown for mental multiplication, the current study suggests that this relationship between working memory capacity and self-efficacy also holds for proportional reasoning. Correlational analyses found gender differences in the relation between self-efficacy and proportional reasoning.