Pinheiro-Chagas Pedro, Didino Daniele, Haase Vitor G, Wood Guilherme, Knops André
Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, CEA DRF/I2BM, INSERM, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, Orsay, France.
Laboratory of Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, Stanford Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jul 17;9:1062. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01062. eCollection 2018.
Mental calculation is thought to be tightly related to visuospatial abilities. One of the strongest evidence for this link is the widely replicated operational momentum (OM) effect: the tendency to overestimate the result of additions and to underestimate the result of subtractions. Although the OM effect has been found in both infants and adults, no study has directly investigated its developmental trajectory until now. However, to fully understand the cognitive mechanisms lying at the core of the OM effect it is important to investigate its developmental dynamics. In the present study, we investigated the development of the OM effect in a group of 162 children from 8 to 12 years old. Participants had to select among five response alternatives the correct result of approximate addition and subtraction problems. Response alternatives were simultaneously presented on the screen at different locations. While no effect was observed for the youngest age group, children aged 9 and older showed a clear OM effect. Interestingly, the OM effect monotonically increased with age. The increase of the OM effect was accompanied by an increase in overall accuracy. That is, while younger children made more and non-systematic errors, older children made less but systematic errors. This monotonous increase of the OM effect with age is not predicted by the compression account (i.e., linear calculation performed on a compressed code). The attentional shift account, however, provides a possible explanation of these results based on the functional relationship between visuospatial attention and mental calculation and on the influence of formal schooling. We propose that the acquisition of arithmetical skills could reinforce the systematic reliance on the spatial mental number line and attentional mechanisms that control the displacement along this metric. Our results provide a step in the understanding of the mechanisms underlying approximate calculation and an important empirical constraint for current accounts on the origin of the OM effect.
心算被认为与视觉空间能力密切相关。这种联系最有力的证据之一是广泛重复验证的运算动量（OM）效应：高估加法结果和低估减法结果的倾向。尽管在婴儿和成人中都发现了OM效应，但到目前为止，还没有研究直接调查其发展轨迹。然而，为了充分理解OM效应核心的认知机制，研究其发展动态很重要。在本研究中，我们调查了162名8至12岁儿童的OM效应发展情况。参与者必须从五个反应选项中选择近似加法和减法问题的正确结果。反应选项同时呈现在屏幕的不同位置。最年幼的年龄组未观察到效应，而9岁及以上的儿童则表现出明显的OM效应。有趣的是，OM效应随年龄单调增加。OM效应的增加伴随着总体准确性的提高。也就是说，年幼的儿童犯的错误更多且无系统性，而年长的儿童犯的错误更少但有系统性。OM效应随年龄的这种单调增加无法用压缩理论（即在压缩代码上进行的线性计算）来预测。然而，注意力转移理论基于视觉空间注意力与心算之间的功能关系以及正规学校教育的影响，为这些结果提供了一种可能的解释。我们提出，算术技能的习得可能会加强对空间心理数字线和控制沿该度量位移的注意力机制的系统性依赖。我们的研究结果为理解近似计算背后的机制迈出了一步，并为当前关于OM效应起源的理论提供了重要的实证约束。
