ArticlePsychological research2016
Counting is a spatial process: evidence from eye movements.
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 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 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
- Manual pointing bias reflects spatial organization of number knowledge.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Motion-numerical compatibility affects magnitude classification.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Eye movements follow the dynamic shifts of attention through serial order in verbal working memory.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A functional role for oculomotor preparation in mental arithmetic evidenced by the abducted eye paradigm.Psychological research · 2023Article
- The predictive role of eye movements in mental arithmetic.Experimental brain research · 2022Article
- Eye-movements reveal the serial position of the attended item in verbal working memory.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2022Article
- Reading direction and spatial effects in parity and arithmetic tasks.Psychological research · 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
- The Force of Numbers: Investigating Manual Signatures of Embodied Number Processing.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- How does number magnitude influence temporal and spatial parameters of eye movements?Experimental brain research · 2020Article
- Spatial grounding of symbolic arithmetic: an investigation with optokinetic stimulation.Psychological research · 2019Article
- Mental Number Representations in 2D Space.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Traffic symbol recognition modulates bodily actions.PloS one · 2019Article
- Clock Walking and Gender: How Circular Movements Influence Arithmetic Calculations.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Addition and Subtraction but Not Multiplication and Division Cause Shifts of Spatial Attention.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2018Article
- Counting on the mental number line to make a move: sensorimotor ('pen') control and numerical processing.Experimental brain research · 2017Article
- Impact of optokinetic stimulation on mental arithmetic.Psychological research · 2017Article
- The Time Course of Spatial Attention Shifts in Elementary Arithmetic.Scientific reports · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Spatial-numerical associations (small numbers-left/lower space and large numbers-right/upper space) are regularly found in simple number categorization tasks. These associations were taken as evidence for a spatially oriented mental number line. However, the role of spatial-numerical associations during more complex number processing, such as counting or mental arithmetic is less clear. Here, we investigated whether counting is associated with a movement along the mental number line. Participants counted aloud upward or downward in steps of 3 for 45 s while looking at a blank screen. Gaze position during upward counting shifted rightward and upward, while the pattern for downward counting was less clear. Our results, therefore, confirm the hypothesis of a movement along the mental number line for addition. We conclude that space is not only used to represent number magnitudes but also to actively operate on numbers in more complex tasks such as counting, and that the eyes reflect this spatial mental operation.
Indexed as
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26608732What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.