Abstract
Starting from a rich body of evidence on the strict bidirectional relationship between numerical cognition and action processes, the present study aims at deepening the existing knowledge of the influence of body movement on arithmetic calculation. Numerous studies have shown that moving the body along the vertical or the horizontal axis could facilitate calculations such as additions and subtractions. More specifically, results showed an effect of congruence between the type of operation (additions vs. subtractions) and the direction of the movement performed (up/right or down/left). While this congruence effect is present for both additions and subtractions when the axis of action is vertical, when the axis of action is horizontal, the effect appears only for additions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of circular motion, which has so far not been explored, on counting. Participants were asked to count by adding or subtracting “three,” while performing a circular motion (i.e., a clockwise or counterclockwise movement), in an active (i.e., walking) or passive mode (i.e., being pushed on a wheelchair). Results showed a congruence effect for additions calculated in the active modality and only for male participants. Implications of the results for theories of embodied cognition and for the debate on gender differences in mathematical skills are discussed in this paper.
Highlights
In the last two decades, a growing number of studies have increased our knowledge about the link between space and numerical cognition
The seminal effect demonstrating an influence of number magnitude on space is the so-called spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect (Dehaene et al, 1993)
These results do not imply a general better number-processing capability in men as compared with women. They leave the question open as to whether individuals of different gender may use different strategies to complete complex mathematical tasks and whether body movement differently influences men and women, due to the documented gender difference in spatial cognition (Geary et al, 2000). These findings suggest a gender difference for number representation in adults; it is less known whether such a difference should emerge when participants are required to process the absolute numerical information, and to perform arithmetic calculations during whole body motions
Summary
In the last two decades, a growing number of studies have increased our knowledge about the link between space and numerical cognition. It has been claimed that while the horizontal axis is more influenced by cultural factors (e.g., the direction of writing) and is likely an artifact of measurement, number concepts are instead clearly associated to the vertical axis, in line with an embodied cognition perspective (Shaki and Fischer, 2018) Starting from these results, the aim of the present study was to deepen the relationship between the passive or active movements of our body in space and the numerical processing by studying a movement that has so far not been explored, that is, the circular motion (i.e., clockwise/counterclockwise movement). The present study is designed to investigate gender differences in the effect of circular movement on arithmetic performance
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