The Role of the Physical Environment and Size of Objects in Length Estimation [Review]

THE ROLE OF THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT AND SIZE OF OBJECTS IN LENGTH ESTIMATION It is an interesting paper focused on investigating whether the physical environment wherein the estimation took place and the size of the TBE objects would influence the type and size of the used mental measurement units and whether the type and size of measurement units that are used as well as the physical environment would have an impact on estimation performance. The paper is well written and easy to follow. Authors formulated clear research questions and hypotheses that they justified from a review of literature “finding the gaps” and later, answered them in the results section. After my reading, I have the following comments that maybe can help authors reflect and improve the paper:  Authors have justified the objectives of the study finding a gap in previous literature, focused on shedding light on the choice and use of mental measurement units by the estimators. As far as I know most of the previous research (from the literature review) is focused on the teaching and learning of measurement with students (primary or secondary). So, how are authors contributing to this previous research taking into account the participants of this study (undergraduates and master students)? What is the objective of this study, considering these participants? Can authors discuss their results with previous studies if the participants are from a different age range? What are the implications of this study for the teaching and learning of length estimation?  Since authors focused on undergraduates, should they revise literature focused on undergraduates’ knowledge related to measurement / pre-service teachers’ knowledge related to measurement? There is previous research focused on this field. If this is not the focus, from my point of view, authors should clarify a little more why they decided to test young adult participants (last paragraph before method section, page 9) and how they are contributing to the previous research.  Regarding the instrument, which are the decisions behind the selection of the ribbon sizes used? And for the tiles, chairs and blackboard in the EM Condition? My question here is that authors justified the importance of studying the physical environment from the next sentence: “According to the theory of situated cognition, knowledge is constructed through activities that are bound to physical and social cultural contexts and thus it is useless to examine cognition as if it takes place without acting in a contextualize setting.” Is the EM Condition a contextualized context from this perspective? Is the task used in the EM condition an authentic task?  Minor comment: From my point of view, the categories identified answer research question 1, so they should go in the results section (section 4.1).  The analysis carried out is missing in the data analysis section. How did authors codify the data? More information about the analysis carried out could help reader to understand the codification of the data and the statistical analysis performed.  The paper would enrich if authors add a section with implications for the teaching and learning of measurement.