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Related Experiment Video

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Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Published on: March 1, 2017

The influence of implicit hand-based representations on mental arithmetic.

Elise Klein¹, Korbinian Moeller, Klaus Willmes

¹Section Neuropsychology, Department of Neurology, University Hospital, RWTH Aachen University Aachen, Germany.

Frontiers in Psychology

|September 20, 2011

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Even adults show finger-based effects in mental arithmetic, suggesting embodied representations like finger counting influence number processing. This challenges the idea that such effects are only a developmental stage.

Keywords:

embodied cognition finger counting mental arithmetic sub-base-five

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Developmental Psychology

Background:

A functional link between finger counting and number processing is increasingly recognized.
Bodily experiences, including finger counting, may shape adult mental number representations.
The influence of finger counting systems on adult mental arithmetic performance is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether finger-based sub-base-five effects influence adult mental arithmetic performance.
To explore the role of embodied representations in abstract cognitive tasks.

Main Methods:

Examined finger-based sub-base-five effects in an addition production task with educated adults.
Analyzed response times to identify numerical processing patterns.

Main Results:

Replicated the standard base-10 crossing effect.
Observed a novel sub-base-five effect, where crossing a sub-base-five boundary increased response times.
This sub-base-five effect, previously seen only in children, was present in adults.

Conclusions:

Embodied representations, such as finger counting patterns, modulate arithmetic performance even in adults.
These findings suggest that abstract cognition in adults may be partly rooted in bodily experiences.
The study supports the idea that finger-based numerical effects are not solely a transitory developmental stage.