Spatial grounding of symbolic arithmetic: an investigation with optokinetic stimulation.

ABSTRACT: Growing evidence suggests that mental calculation might involve movements of attention along a spatial representation of numerical magnitude. Addition and subtraction on nonsymbolic numbers (numerosities) seem to induce a "momentum" effect, and have been linked to distinct patterns of neural activity in cortical regions subserving attention and eye movements. We investigated whether mental arithmetic on symbolic numbers, a cornerstone of abstract mathematical reasoning, can be affected by the manipulation of overt spatial attention induced by optokinetic stimulation (OKS). Participants performed additions or subtractions of auditory two-digit numbers during horizontal (experiment 1) or vertical OKS (experiment 2), and eye movements were concurrently recorded. In both experiments, the resul

SUBMITTER: Blini E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6373542 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature