ArticlePsychological research2016
Interference of lateralized distractors on arithmetic problem solving: a functional role for attention shifts in mental calculation.
Article in Psychological research, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Spatial attention in mental arithmetic: A literature review and meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Pooled it
- Looking into the Calculating Mind: Evidence About Arithmetic from Eye-Tracking Studies.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Temporal momentum: an online replication and beyond.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Spatial coding of arithmetic operations in early learning: an eye tracking study in first-grade elementary school children.Psychological research · 2025Article
- A functional role for oculomotor preparation in mental arithmetic evidenced by the abducted eye paradigm.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Perceived Motion and Operational Momentum: How Speed, Distance, and Time Influence Two-Digit Arithmetic.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Assessing orienting of attention to understand the time course of mental calculation.Cognitive processing · 2020Article
- Semantic associations between arithmetic and space: Evidence from temporal order judgements.Memory & cognition · 2020Article
- Spatial grounding of symbolic arithmetic: an investigation with optokinetic stimulation.Psychological research · 2019Article
- Number line estimation and complex mental calculation: Is there a shared cognitive process driving the two tasks?Cognitive processing · 2018Article
- The Developmental Trajectory of the Operational Momentum Effect.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Impact of optokinetic stimulation on mental arithmetic.Psychological research · 2017Article
- Reassessing lateralization in calculation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Exploring the numerical mind by eye-tracking: a special issue.Psychological research · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Solving arithmetic problems has been shown to induce shifts of spatial attention in simple probe-detection tasks, subtractions orienting attention to the left side and additions to the right side of space. Whether these attentional shifts constitute epiphenomena or are critically linked to the calculation process is still unknown. In the present study, we investigate participants' performance on addition and subtraction solving while they have to detect central or lateralized targets. The results show that lateralized distractors presented in the hemifield congruent to the operation to be solved interfere with arithmetical solving: participants are slower to solve subtractions or additions when distractors are located on the left or on the right, respectively. These results converge with previous data to show that attentional shifts underlie not only number processing but also mental arithmetic. They extend them as they reveal the reverse effect of the one previously reported by showing that inducing attention shifts interferes with the solving of arithmetic problems. They also demonstrate that spatial attentional shifts are part of the calculation procedure of solving mentally arithmetic problems. Their functional role is to access, from the first operand, the representation of the result in a direction congruent to the operation.
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