TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mioni, Giovanna
A1  - Fischer, Martin H.
A1  - Shaki, Samuel
T1  - Heuristics and biases in the mental manipulation of magnitudes
BT  - Evidence from length and time production
JF  - Quarterly journal of experimental psychology / published in association with Experimental Psychology Society
N2  - There is a debate about whether and why we overestimate addition and underestimate subtraction results (Operational Momentum or OM effect). Spatial-attentional accounts of OM compete with a model which postulates that OM reflects a weighted combination of multiple arithmetic heuristics and biases (AHAB). This study addressed this debate with the theoretically diagnostic distinction between zero problems (e.g., 3 + 0, 3 - 0) and non-zero problems (e.g., 2 + 1, 4 - 1) because AHAB, in contrast to all other accounts, uniquely predicts reverse OM for the latter problem type. In two tests (line-length production and time production), participants indeed produced shorter lines and under-estimated time intervals in non-zero additions compared with subtractions. This predicted interaction between operation and problem type extends OM to non-spatial magnitudes and highlights the strength of AHAB regarding different problem types and modalities during the mental manipulation of magnitudes. They also suggest that OM reflects methodological details, whereas reverse OM is the more representative behavioural signature of mental arithmetic.
KW  - Heuristics and biases
KW  - mental arithmetic
KW  - operational momentum
KW  - SNARC
KW  - effect
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820967663
SN  - 1747-0218
SN  - 1747-0226
VL  - 74
IS  - 3
SP  - 536
EP  - 547
PB  - SAGE Publishing
CY  - Thousand Oaks, CA
ER  -