Moving attention along the mental number line in preschool age: Study of the operational momentum in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children's non‐symbolic arithmetic

Haman, Maciej; Lipowska, Katarzyna

doi:10.1111/desc.13007

Cited by 9 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 68 publications

(140 reference statements)

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“…Haman et al, 2021). The dependence of OM on children's efficiency of attentional control found in Knops et al (2013), and the effects of motion direction in Haman and Lipowska (2021) are also in-line with this hypothesis and additionally imbue it with developmental reliability. However, both the imperfect decoding/compression and "recycled" spatial attention hypotheses suggest important ramifications for understanding the foundations and development of mental arithmetic and its role in mastering education-dependent symbolic arithmetic.…”

Section: 2supporting

confidence: 77%

“…Note that the number-line estimation task was designed to investigate the mapping of numerical quantities onto the spatial representation, so it may be expected that it involves the same spatial-numerical associations, and require the same kind of numerical transformations (e.g., decoding logarithmically scaled representations) as arithmetic. Haman and Lipowska (2021) tested children aged three to five using non-symbolic addition and subtraction. In Experiment 1, using problems with ± 5 or 6 elements, participants demonstrated directional OM by responding faster in subtraction/addition trials when the box containing the outcome moved left or right respectively.…”

Section: Research Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preschoolers prior formal mathematics education engage numerical magnitude representation rather than counting principles in symbolic ±1 arithmetic: Evidence from the operational momentum effect

Haman

Lipowska

2022

Developmental Science

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Section: 2supporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Research Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preschoolers prior formal mathematics education engage numerical magnitude representation rather than counting principles in symbolic ±1 arithmetic: Evidence from the operational momentum effect

Haman

Lipowska

2022

Developmental Science

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“…This suggests that the mechanism of attentional tracking leftward-moving objects sets attention to the small number side, while rightward motion moves attention to the larger number side (note that neural adaptation cancels direct effects of the stimuli, promoting the reversed pattern of reactions). The motion-induced operational momentum was also demonstrated in non-symbolic arithmetic in preschool children (Haman and Lipowska, 2021).…”

Section: Representational Momentum As a Possible Mechanism Of Operational Momentum-related Biasmentioning

confidence: 82%

Perceived Motion and Operational Momentum: How Speed, Distance, and Time Influence Two-Digit Arithmetic

2021

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Operational momentum was originally defined as a bias toward underestimating outcomes of subtraction and overestimating outcomes of addition. It was suggested that these estimation biases are due to leftward attentional shift along the mental number-line (spatially organized internal representation of number) in subtraction and rightward shift in addition. This assumes the use of “recycled” mechanisms of spatial attention, including “representational momentum” – a tendency to overestimate future position of a moving object, which compensates for the moving object’s shift during preparation of a reaction. We tested a strong version of this assumption directly, priming two-digit addition and subtraction problems with leftward and rightward motion of varied velocity, as velocity of the tracked object was found to be a factor in determining representational momentum effect size. Operands were subsequently moving across the computer screen, and the participants’ task was to validate an outcome proposed at the end of the event, which was either too low, correct, or too high. We found improved accuracy in detecting too-high outcomes of addition, as well as complex patterns of interactions involving arithmetic operation, outcome option, speed, and direction of motion, in the analysis of reaction times. These results significantly extend previous evidence for the involvement of spatial attention in mental arithmetic, showing movement of the external attention focus as a factor directing internal attention in processing numerical information. As a whole, however, the results are incompatible with expectations derived from the strong analogy between operational and representational momenta. We suggest that the full model may be more complex than simply “moving attention along the mental number-line” as a direct counterpart of attention directed at a moving object.

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“…Children are asked to make sets of n by putting toy fish in a pond (e.g., Condry & Spelke, 2008) or by feeding toys to a puppet or stuffed animal (e.g., Sarnecka & Gelman, 2004;Haman & Lipowska, 2021). In the absence of a narrative set-up, children are simply asked "Can you give me n?"…”

Section: 1what Stimuli Are Used?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Thirty years of the Give-N task: A systematic review, reflections, and recommendations

Wege¹,

Bourque²,

Merkley³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The Give-N (give-a-number) task has become a popular assessment of children’s number word learning since Wynn’s (1990; 1992) seminal work 30 years ago. Using the Give-N task, numerous studies have shown that children learn the first few number words slowly and effortfully, before they understand how counting represents number. We conducted a systematic review of studies using the Give-N task to provide an overview of the task’s theoretical and methodological significance and document variations in its administration and scoring. We found quite a lot of variation in how the task has been used and interpreted in the literature. Such variations include, for example, whether children are asked to count on every trial, whether the study adopts a titration method, the type of stimuli used, and the scoring criteria used for knower-level classifications. Moving forward with theory and methodology for research in children’s acquisition of number words and counting requires 1) reflection on the limitations of classifying children’s performance on the Give-N task in the knower-level framework and 2) consistent reporting of Give-N methodology.

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Moving attention along the mental number line in preschool age: Study of the operational momentum in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children's non‐symbolic arithmetic

Cited by 9 publications

References 68 publications

Preschoolers prior formal mathematics education engage numerical magnitude representation rather than counting principles in symbolic ±1 arithmetic: Evidence from the operational momentum effect

Preschoolers prior formal mathematics education engage numerical magnitude representation rather than counting principles in symbolic ±1 arithmetic: Evidence from the operational momentum effect

Perceived Motion and Operational Momentum: How Speed, Distance, and Time Influence Two-Digit Arithmetic

Thirty years of the Give-N task: A systematic review, reflections, and recommendations

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