{"pk":25523,"title":"Interactivity, Expertise and Individual Differences\nin Mental Arithmetic","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Participants completed long single digit sums in two\ninteractivity contexts. In a low interactivity condition sums\nwere solved with hands down. In a second, high\ninteractivity condition participants used moveable tokens.\nAs expected accuracy and efficiency was greater in the high\ncompared to the low interactivity condition. In addition,\nparticipants were profiled in terms of working memory\ncapacity, numeracy, math anxiety and expertise in math.\nAll of these measures predicted calculation errors in the\nlow interactivity conditions; however, in the high\ninteractivity condition, participants’ performance was not\ndetermined by any of these variables. We also developed a\nscale to measure task engagement: Participants were\nsignificantly more engaged with the task when they\ncompleted the sums in the high interactivity condition.\nHowever engagement level did not correlate with\ncalculation error, suggesting improvement in performance\nwith tokens was not the result of greater task engagement.\nInteractivity transformed the deployment of arithmetic\nskills, ameliorated performance, and helped to reduce the\ndifference in performance between individuals of low and\nhigh math expertise.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Interactivity; arithmetic; expertise; math\nanxiety; working memory; task engagement"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tc9n4r9","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Lisa","middle_name":"G","last_name":"Guthrie","name_suffix":"","institution":"Kingston University","department":""},{"first_name":"Charlotte","middle_name":"","last_name":"Harris","name_suffix":"","institution":"Kingston University","department":""},{"first_name":"Frederic","middle_name":"","last_name":"Vallee-Tourangeau","name_suffix":"","institution":"Kingston University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25523/galley/15147/download/"}]}