An evaluation of sex and cultural differences in arithmetic retrieval-induced forgetting

Abstract

ABSTRACTRetrieval practice of arithmetic facts (e.g. 2 × 3) can interfere with retrieval of other, closely related arithmetic facts (e.g. 2 + 3), increasing response time (RT) and errors for these problems. Here we examined potential sex and culture-related differences in arithmetic retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). This was motivated by re-analyses of several published arithmetic RIF data sets that appeared to show that the effect occurred for women but not men. Experiment 1 (n = 72) tested for possible sex differences in a diverse but predominantly Canadian university sample. Experiment 2 (n = 48) examined potential sex differences in native Chinese participants, which previous research indicated may not be susceptible to the RIF effect for a particular subset of small addition problems (sum ≤ 10). In Experiment 1, we found no evidence that the addition RIF effect differed between male and female adults. In Experiment 2, the Chinese adults showed RIF for tie problems (e.g. 2 + 2, 3 + 3, etc.) regardless of sex, but neither sex presented RIF for small non-tie addition problems. The results indicated that the RIF effect is not gender specific, and there might not be strong memory retrieval competition between addition and multiplication facts for non-tie problems in Chinese adults.