Spatial biases during mental arithmetic: evidence from eye movements on a blank screen

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Spatial Cognition

Background:

• Spatial-numerical associations are known in number categorization.
• Their role in mental arithmetic remains unclear.
• Hypotheses suggest directional spatial attention shifts during arithmetic operations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the influence of spatial-numerical associations on mental arithmetic.
• To test the hypothesis of directional spatial attention shifts (upward/rightward for addition, downward/leftward for subtraction).

Main Methods:

• Analysis of spontaneous eye movements during mental arithmetic tasks.
• Participants solved verbally presented arithmetic problems aloud.
• Eye tracking recorded gaze position shifts during calculations.

Main Results:

• Gaze position shifted upward significantly more during addition than subtraction.
• Horizontal gaze position was influenced by the magnitude of operands.
• Differences between addition and subtraction were operator-driven, not computation-driven.

Conclusions:

• Eye movements reflect spatial biases linked to arithmetic operations.
• Results support a semantic association between mathematical operations and spatial representations.
• Evidence does not support a mental movement toward the solution during arithmetic.