title: Visuospatial and verbal memory in mental arithmetic.
abstract: Working memory allows complex information to be remembered and manipulated over short periods of time. Correlations between working memory and mathematics achievement have been shown across the lifespan. However, only a few studies have examined the potentially distinct contributions of domain-specific visuospatial and verbal working memory resources in mental arithmetic computation. Here we aimed to fill this gap in a series of six experiments pairing addition and subtraction tasks with verbal and visuospatial working memory and interference tasks. In general, we found higher levels of interference between mental arithmetic and visuospatial working memory tasks than between mental arithmetic and verbal working memory tasks. Additionally, we found that interference that matched the working memory domain of the task (e.g., verbal task with verbal interference) lowered working memory performance more than mismatched interference (verbal task with visuospatial interference). Findings suggest that mental arithmetic relies on domain-specific working memory resources.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UK.
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Clearman
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UK.
authors.forename: Vojtěch
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Klinger
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Cambridge , Cambridge , UK.
authors.forename: Dénes
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Szűcs
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011340:Problem Solving; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Central executive; Domain-specific resources; Mental arithmetic; Working memory