Behavioural evidence for sex differences in the overlap between subtraction and multiplication

Abstract

The present study aims to identify factors that may influence the dissociability of number magnitude processing and arithmetic fact retrieval at the behavioural level. To that end, we assessed both subtraction and multiplication performance in a within-subject approach and evaluated the interdependence of unit-decade integration measures on the one hand as well as sex differences in the interdependence of performance measures on the other hand. We found that subtraction items requiring borrowing (e.g. 53-29 = 24, 3 < 9) are more error prone than subtraction items not requiring borrowing (e.g. 59-23 = 34, 9 > 3), thereby demonstrating a borrowing effect, which has been suggested as a measure of unit-decade integration in subtraction. Furthermore, we observed that multiplication items with decade-consistent distractors (e.g. 6 × 4 = 28 instead of 24) are more error prone that multiplication items with decade-inconsistent distractors (e.g. 6 × 4 = 30 instead of 24), thereby demonstrating a decade-consistency effect, which has been suggested as a measure of unit-decade integration in simple multiplication. However, the borrowing effect in subtraction was not correlated with the effect of decade consistency in simple multiplication in either men or women. This indicates that unit-decade integration arises from different systems in subtraction and multiplication. Nevertheless, men outperformed women not only in subtraction, but also in multiplication. Furthermore, subtraction and multiplication performance on correct solution probes were correlated in women, but unrelated in men. Thus, the view of differential systems for number magnitude processing and arithmetic fact retrieval may not be universal across sexes.

Sex differences in number processing: Differential systems for subtraction and multiplication were confirmed in men, but not in women

“…Like in the present study none of the previous neuroimaging studies on number processing observed overall behavioral differences in task performance between men and women383948, even though sex differences in performance have been suggested in a variety of behavioral studies e.g 3637…”

“…Fourth, we vice versa, recently observed a strong relationship between performance measures during subtraction and multiplication in women, which was absent in men37. This suggests a stronger inter-dependence between performance during number magnitude processing and arithmetic fact retrieval in women than in men.…”

“…However, Royer et al 36. report that men outperform women in the retrieval of arithmetic facts36, a finding we were recently able to replicate using a multiplication task37. Furthermore, men outperformed women in multiplicative number bisection items38.…”

A Finger-Based Numerical Training Failed to Improve Arithmetic Skills in Kindergarten Children Beyond Effects of an Active Non-numerical Control Training

“…In addition, we included gender as it is a debated popular predictor. In several studies gender differences have been observed in some spatial representations of number (e.g., Bull et al, 2013;Reinert et al, 2017), in children's early arithmetic skill (Krinzinger et al, 2012;Hornburg et al, 2017;see also Brunner et al, 2011), and even in adults' arithmetic and numerical skills (Pletzer et al, 2013(Pletzer et al, , 2016. However, many recent studies have not found that females and males differ, for example, in a meta-analysis of math performance (Hyde, 2016), in several studies on children at various stages of their development (Morsanyi et al, 2018;Bakker et al, 2019;Hutchison et al, 2019); and in an adult online study testing the SNARC effect with over 1000 participants (see supplementary materials of Cipora et al, 2019).…”

Uncovering sex/gender differences of arithmetic in the human brain: Insights from fMRI studies

“…In another study, Pletzer et al. ( 2016 ) examined brain activations of young adults while performing 2‐operand subtraction and multiplication tasks in MRI scanners. They identified the conventional operation effect by which subtraction elicited stronger IPS activations than multiplication, and multiplication engaged in less AG deactivations than subtraction as in previous literature (Chochon et al., 1999 ; Prado et al., 2011 ; Rosenberg‐Lee et al., 2011 ).…”