title: Simple arithmetic: electrophysiological evidence of coactivation and selection of arithmetic facts.
abstract: This study aimed at exploring the time course of processes underlying the associative confusion effect. We also evaluated the consequences of selecting arithmetic facts to resolve addition problems. We gathered electrophysiological evidence when participants performed a verification task. Simple addition problems were presented in blocks of two trials and participants decided whether they were correct or not. The N400-like component was considered an index of semantic access (i.e., the retrieval of arithmetic facts), and the P200 component was used to determine the difficulty associated with encoding after the answer to an addition problem. When an addition problem was incorrect but the result presented to the participant was that of multiplying the operands (e.g., 2 + 4 = 8), N400-like amplitude was reduced relative to an unrelated condition (e.g., 2 + 4 = 10). This finding suggested that the coactivation of addition and multiplication facts took place. Furthermore, the P200 amplitude was more positive when participants answered to addition problems whose result was that of multiplying the operands of the previous trial (e.g., 2 + 6 = 8). This suggests that irrelevant results were inhibited and it was difficult to encode them later.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja, s/n., 18071, Granada, Spain.|Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Megías
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja, s/n., 18071, Granada, Spain. pmacizo@ugr.es.|Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Granada, Spain. pmacizo@ugr.es.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Macizo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D055641:Mathematical Concepts; D008433:Mathematics; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Associative confusion effect; Cognitive arithmetic; N400; P200; Simple arithmetic