TY  - JOUR
A1  - Myachykov, Andriy
A1  - Chapman, Ashley J.
A1  - Fischer, Martin H.
T1  - Cross-representational interactions
BT  - Interface and overlap mechanisms
JF  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - A crucial question facing cognitive science concerns the nature of conceptual representations as well as the constraints on the interactions between them. One specific question we address in this paper is what makes cross-representational interplay possible? We offer two distinct theoretical scenarios: according to the first scenario, co-activated knowledge representations interact with the help of an interface established between them via congruent activation in a mediating third-party general cognitive mechanism, e.g., attention. According to the second scenario, co-activated knowledge representations interact due to an overlap between their features, for example when they share a magnitude component. First, we make a case for cross representational interplay based on grounded and situated theories of cognition. Second, we discuss interface-based interactions between distinct (i.e., non-overlapping) knowledge representations. Third, we discuss how co-activated representations may share their architecture via partial overlap. Finally, we outline constraints regarding the flexibility of these proposed mechanisms.
KW  - representation
KW  - cross-representational interaction
KW  - simulation
KW  - embodiment
KW  - grounded cognition
Y1  - 2017
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 7
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hartmann, Matthias
A1  - Mast, Fred W.
A1  - Fischer, Martin H.
T1  - Spatial biases during mental arithmetic: evidence from eye movements on a blank screen
JF  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - While the influence of spatial-numerical associations in number categorization tasks has been well established, their role in mental arithmetic is less clear. It has been hypothesized that mental addition leads to rightward and upward shifts of spatial attention (along the "mental number line"), whereas subtraction leads to leftward and downward shifts. We addressed this hypothesis by analyzing spontaneous eye movements during mental arithmetic. Participants solved verbally presented arithmetic problems (e.g., 2 + 7, 8-3) aloud while looking at a blank screen. We found that eye movements reflected spatial biases in the ongoing mental operation: Gaze position shifted more upward when participants solved addition compared to subtraction problems, and the horizontal gaze position was partly determined by the magnitude of the operands. Interestingly, the difference between addition and subtraction trials was driven by the operator (plus vs. minus) but was not influenced by the computational process. Thus, our results do not support the idea of a mental movement toward the solution during arithmetic but indicate a semantic association between operation and space.
KW  - mental arithmetic
KW  - eye movements
KW  - mental number line
KW  - operational momentum
KW  - embodied cognition
KW  - grounded cognition
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00012
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 6
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -