The visual number world
- In the domain of language research, the simultaneous presentation of a visual scene and its auditory description (i.e., the visual world paradigm) has been used to reveal the timing of mental mechanisms. Here we apply this rationale to the domain of numerical cognition in order to explore the differences between fast and slow arithmetic performance, and to further study the role of spatial-numerical associations during mental arithmetic. We presented 30 healthy adults simultaneously with visual displays containing four numbers and with auditory addition and subtraction problems. Analysis of eye movements revealed that participants look spontaneously at the numbers they currently process (operands, solution). Faster performance was characterized by shorter latencies prior to fixating the relevant numbers and fewer revisits to the first operand while computing the solution. These signatures of superior task performance were more pronounced for addition and visual numbers arranged in ascending order, and for subtraction and numbersIn the domain of language research, the simultaneous presentation of a visual scene and its auditory description (i.e., the visual world paradigm) has been used to reveal the timing of mental mechanisms. Here we apply this rationale to the domain of numerical cognition in order to explore the differences between fast and slow arithmetic performance, and to further study the role of spatial-numerical associations during mental arithmetic. We presented 30 healthy adults simultaneously with visual displays containing four numbers and with auditory addition and subtraction problems. Analysis of eye movements revealed that participants look spontaneously at the numbers they currently process (operands, solution). Faster performance was characterized by shorter latencies prior to fixating the relevant numbers and fewer revisits to the first operand while computing the solution. These signatures of superior task performance were more pronounced for addition and visual numbers arranged in ascending order, and for subtraction and numbers arranged in descending order (compared to the opposite pairings). Our results show that the visual number world-paradigm provides on-line access to the mind during mental arithmetic, is able to capture variability in arithmetic performance, and is sensitive to visual layout manipulations that are otherwise not reflected in response time measurements.…
Author details: | Matthias HartmannORCiD, Jochen LaubrockORCiDGND, Martin H. FischerORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2016.1240812 |
ISSN: | 1747-0218 |
ISSN: | 1747-0226 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27758160 |
Title of parent work (English): | The quarterly journal of experimental psychology |
Subtitle (English): | a dynamic approach to study the mathematical mind |
Publisher: | Sage Publ. |
Place of publishing: | London |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/01/01 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2022/04/07 |
Tag: | Eye movements; Mental arithmetic; Mental number line; Visual world paradigm |
Volume: | 71 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 9 |
First page: | 28 |
Last Page: | 36 |
Funding institution: | Swiss National Science FoundationSwiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [P2BEP1_152104] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Bronze Open-Access |