TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wiemers, Michael
A1  - Bekkering, Harold
A1  - Lindemann, Oliver
T1  - Spatial interferences in mental arithmetic: Evidence from the motion-arithmetic compatibility effect
JF  - The quarterly journal of experimental psychology
N2  - Recent research on spatial number representations suggests that the number space is not necessarily horizontally organized and might also be affected by acquired associations between magnitude and sensory experiences in vertical space. Evidence for this claim is, however, controversial. The present study now aims to compare vertical and horizontal spatial associations in mental arithmetic. In Experiment 1, participants solved addition and subtraction problems and indicated the result verbally while moving their outstretched right arm continuously left-, right-, up-, or downwards. The analysis of the problem-solving performances revealed a motion-arithmetic compatibility effect for spatial actions along both the horizontal and the vertical axes. Performances in additions was impaired while making downward compared to upward movements as well as when moving left compared to right and vice versa in subtractions. In Experiment 2, instead of being instructed to perform active body movements, participants calculated while the problems moved in one of the four relative directions on the screen. For visual motions, only the motion-arithmetic compatibility effect for the vertical dimension could be replicated. Taken together, our findings provide first evidence for an impact of spatial processing on mental arithmetic. Moreover, the stronger effect of the vertical dimension supports the idea that mental calculations operate on representations of numerical magnitude that are grounded in a vertically organized mental number space.
KW  - Mental arithmetic
KW  - Numerical cognition
KW  - Spatial-numerical associations
KW  - Embodied cognition
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2014.889180
SN  - 1747-0218
SN  - 1747-0226
VL  - 67
IS  - 8
SP  - 1557
EP  - 1570
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gianelli, Claudia
A1  - Ranzini, Mariagrazia
A1  - Marzocchi, Michele
A1  - Micheli, Leticia Rettore
A1  - Borghi, Anna M.
T1  - Influence of numerical magnitudes on the free choice of an object position
JF  - Cognitive processing : international quarterly of cognitive science
N2  - The link between numerical magnitude and mechanisms of spatial orienting has been underlined in an increasing number of studies. Similarly, the relationship between numerical magnitude and grasping actions has started to be investigated. The present study focuses on the influence of numerical magnitude processing in the free choice of the position of an object. Participants were presented with a digit (1-9 without 5) and were required to decide whether it was smaller or larger than 5. Then, they had to grasp a small cube and change its position before vocally responding "higher" or "lower". Results showed that in the initial phase of the grasp movement, the grip aperture was modulated by the numerical magnitude. Moreover, participants shifted the position of the cube more leftward with smaller digits compared with larger ones, and they tended to position the object closer to themselves with smaller digits compared with larger ones. These results extend the previous findings indicating that the processing of magnitude is tightly related to the mechanisms of spatial orienting that subserve action execution.
KW  - Spatial-numerical associations
KW  - Magnitude processing
KW  - Hand kinematics
KW  - Embodied cognition
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-012-0483-7
SN  - 1612-4782
VL  - 13
SP  - S185
EP  - S188
PB  - Springer
CY  - Heidelberg
ER  -