The predictive role of eye movements in mental arithmetic
Samuel Salvaggio1, Nicolas Masson1,2, Alexandre Zénon3
1Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Cardinal Mercier, 10, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Experimental Brain Research
|March 4, 2022
Summary
Eye movements reveal how attention shifts during mental arithmetic. Hearing "plus" shifts attention rightward, while addition/subtraction problems involve bidimensional spatial shifts, aiding answer retrieval.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Mathematical Cognition
Background:
- Behavioral studies suggest number manipulation involves left-to-right attention shifts.
- Limited evidence exists on the precise timing of attention shifts during number processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the temporal dynamics of spatial attention shifts during mental arithmetic.
- To explore the relationship between eye movements and cognitive processes in solving addition and subtraction problems.
Main Methods:
- Utilized high spatio-temporal resolution eye-tracking to record eye movements during mental solving of arithmetic problems.
- Measured eye position changes in response to auditory presentation of operators ('plus', 'minus') and problem offset.
Main Results:
- Hearing 'plus' caused an immediate rightward eye shift compared to 'minus'.
- Addition problems led to rightward and upward eye shifts, suggesting bidimensional spatial representation.
- Eye movements correlated with carrying/borrowing procedures and predicted answer ranges.
Conclusions:
- Spatial attention shifts rapidly during number processing, guided by arithmetic operations.
- Attention plays a predictive role in narrowing down potential answers and facilitating problem-solving in working memory.
- Numerical representation and manipulation involve dynamic, bidimensional spatial attention.
