Summing up: A functional role of eye movements along the mental number line for arithmetic

Hartmann, Matthias

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103770

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Future interference studies should investigate this point by manipulating the locus of spatial attention and observing the impact on addition and subtraction solving. This approach was already successfully used in adults to demonstrate the functional relationship between attention and arithmetic (e.g., Blini et al., 2019; Hartmann, 2022; Masson & Pesenti, 2023; Wiemers et al., 2014) and could be extended to developmental studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements reveal that young school children shift attention when solving additions and subtractions

Masson,

Dormal,

Stephany

et al. 2023

Developmental Science

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Adults shift their attention to the right or to the left along a spatial continuum when solving additions and subtractions, respectively. Studies suggest that these shifts not only support the exact computation of the results but also anticipatively narrow down the range of plausible answers when processing the operands. However, little is known on when and how these attentional shifts arise in childhood during the acquisition of arithmetic. Here, an eye‐tracker with high spatio‐temporal resolution was used to measure spontaneous eye movements, used as a proxy for attentional shifts, while children of 2nd (8 y‐o; N = 50) and 4th (10 y‐o; N = 48) Grade solved simple additions (e.g., 4+3) and subtractions (e.g., 3‐2). Gaze patterns revealed horizontal and vertical attentional shifts in both groups. Critically, horizontal eye movements were observed in 4th Graders as soon as the first operand and the operator were presented and thus before the beginning of the exact computation. In 2nd Graders, attentional shifts were only observed after the presentation of the second operand just before the response was made. This demonstrates that spatial attention is recruited when children solve arithmetic problems, even in the early stages of learning mathematics. The time course of these attentional shifts suggests that with practice in arithmetic children start to use spatial attention to anticipatively guide the search for the answer and facilitate the implementation of solving procedures.Research Highlights Additions and subtractions are associated to right and left attentional shifts in adults, but it is unknown when these mechanisms arise in childhood. Children of 8–10 years old solved single‐digit additions and subtractions while looking at a blank screen. Eye movements showed that children of 8 years old already show spatial biases possibly to represent the response when knowing both operands. Children of 10 years old shift attention before knowing the second operand to anticipatively guide the search for plausible answers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements reveal that young school children shift attention when solving additions and subtractions

Masson,

Dormal,

Stephany

et al. 2023

Developmental Science

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“…The internal tasks in our study did not require any explicit motor response. However, previous studies showed that internal tasks can elicit eye movements (“internal coupling”; e.g., [ 14 , 21 , 63 ], and eye movements are thought to play a functional role in internally directed cognition (E.g., memory reinstatement; [ 24 , 29 ]). In the present study, performing the internal task made it harder to maintain fixation right before the saccade stimulus onset, and the visuospatial task and–to a lesser degree–the arithmetic task were accompanied by an increase in saccades before the saccade stimuli onset, suggesting some “internal task-related” eye movements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants performed a numerical task (mental arithmetic, adding or subtracting) or a visuospatial task (mentally navigating through a matrix), and at the same time followed a moving dot on the screen. While mental arithmetic also involves some spatial processes as indicated the by beneficial effects of congruent eye movements under certain conditions [ 29 ], it mainly draws from general and verbal/numerical resources (e.g., [ 30 ]); in contrast, mentally navigating through a matrix draws heavily on spatial resources [ 31 ], and similar tasks are even used to assess visuospatial capacities (e.g., symmetry span task; [ 32 ]). We found that, in the arithmetic task, workload showed a gradual effect on smooth pursuit eye movements: low workload caused little interference, and high workload caused more interference.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of type and workload of internal tasks on voluntary saccades in a target-distractor saccade task

Walcher,

Korda,

Körner

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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When we engage in internally directed cognition, like doing mental arithmetic or mind wandering, fewer cognitive resources are assigned for other activities like reacting to perceptual input—an effect termed perceptual decoupling. However, the exact conditions under which perceptual decoupling occurs and its underlying cognitive mechanisms are still unclear. Hence, the present study systematically manipulated the task type (arithmetic, visuospatial) and workload (control, low, high) of the internal task in a within-subject design and tested its effects on voluntary saccades in a target-distractor saccade task. As expected, engagement in internal tasks delayed saccades to the target. This effect was moderated by time, task, and workload: The delay was largest right after internal task onset and then decreased, potentially reflecting the intensity of internal task demands. Saccades were also more delayed for the high compared to the low workload condition in the arithmetic task, whereas workload conditions had similarly high effects in the visuospatial task. Findings suggests that perceptual decoupling of eye behavior gradually increases with internal demands on general resources and that perceptual decoupling is specifically sensitive to internal demands on visuospatial resources. The latter may be mediated by interference due to eye behavior elicited by the internal task itself. Internal tasks did not affect the saccade latency-deviation trade-off, indicating that while the internal tasks delayed the execution of the saccade, the perception of the saccade stimuli and spatial planning of the saccade continued unaffected in parallel to the internal tasks. Together, these findings shed further light on the specific mechanisms underlying perceptual decoupling by suggesting that perceptual decoupling of eye behavior increases as internal demands on cognitive resources overlap more strongly with demands of the external task.

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“…Single step addition problems are the easiest and involve the shortest computational phase with the lowest proportion of actual arithmetic computation (Hartmann, 2022). It could be anticipated that the left and right IPS, as core regions of number representation, play a functional role in the arithmetic process for these types of problems (Andres et al, 2011;Dehaene, 2011;Venkatraman et al, 2005).…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation over the left (but not right) parietal cortex facilitates mental arithmetic

Hartmann,

Dumureau

2024

Preprint

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Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) allow investigating the causal involvement of specific brain areas in mental arithmetic. In this study, we utilized for the first time the enhanced spatial precision of high-definition (HD)-tDCS to study the functional involvement of the left and right IPS in mental arithmetic. A total of 25 participants underwent left IPS, right IPS, and sham stimulation in separate sessions while solving single- and multi-step addition and subtraction problems. We found that left but not right IPS stimulation (vs. sham) improved performance across all types of problems. Notably, the observed improvements in arithmetic performance were specific to arithmetic processing, as IPS stimulation had no enhancing effect on performance in a control n-back task. These results provide compelling evidence supporting the functional involvement of the left IPS in arithmetic problem-solving across a wide range of problem types.

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Summing up: A functional role of eye movements along the mental number line for arithmetic

Cited by 10 publications

References 75 publications

Eye movements reveal that young school children shift attention when solving additions and subtractions

Eye movements reveal that young school children shift attention when solving additions and subtractions

The effects of type and workload of internal tasks on voluntary saccades in a target-distractor saccade task

Anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation over the left (but not right) parietal cortex facilitates mental arithmetic

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