Abstract
It has been proposed that elementary arithmetic induces spatial shifts of attention. However, the timing of this arithmetic-space association remains unknown. Here we investigate this issue with a target detection paradigm. Detecting targets in the right visual field was faster than in the left visual field when preceded by an addition operation, while detecting targets in the left visual field was faster than in the right visual field when preceded by a subtraction operation. The arithmetic-space association was found both at the end of the arithmetic operation and during calculation. In contrast, the processing of operators themselves did not induce spatial biases. Our results suggest that the arithmetic-space association resides in the mental arithmetic operation rather than in the individual numbers or the operators. Moreover, the temporal course of this effect was different in addition and subtraction.
Highlights
Recent studies started to investigate the locus and timing of spatial shifts of attention in mental arithmetic16–18
At an earlier stage, Mathieu et al.18 found that addition problems were solved faster when the second operand was presented to the right than to the left, whereas subtraction problems were solved faster when the second operand was presented to the left than to the right
The following trials were excluded: [1] in the arithmetic task, trials where the microphone failed to trigger, or the judgment RT was more than 5000 ms (1.5%), [2] in the target detection task, trials where the target detection time was smaller or larger than three standard deviations from the mean for each participant (1.8%)
Summary
Recent studies started to investigate the locus and timing of spatial shifts of attention in mental arithmetic. Masson et al. found the arithmetic-space association at 450 ms after mental calculation, the single stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 450 ms cannot uncover the time course of attention shifts. On each trial participants performed two tasks: [1] solving an arithmetic problem and judging whether the proposed result (proposal) was correct or incorrect (mental arithmetic task), [2] detecting whether the target (a white solid circle) was present or not (target detection task) (see Fig. 1A) The latter task measured where attention was located in space (left or right). To investigate the time course of arithmetic-space association, the target detection task was located at different stages of the arithmetic operation for different experiments (see Fig. 1B). In all five experiments we adopted three variable delay times (150, 300 and 500 ms) before target detection to capture any potential spatial shifts of attention
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