Does body motion influence arithmetic problem solving

Recent evidence indicates that body movements can influence number processing (Hartmann, et al., 2012) and arithmetic problem solving (Lugli, et al., 2013). Thus it was for instance observed that moving the arm rightward and upward led to better performance during additions and leftward and downward during subtractions (Wiemers, et al., 2014). These results could be explained by the fact that left/right body motion can be (in)compatible with the attentional motion towards the left/right on the mental number line known to underlie subtractions/additions (i.e. operational momentum effect) (McCrink, et al., 2007; Lindemann, et al., 2011). The compatible situations (i.e. leftwards motion - subtraction and rightwards motion - addition) thus are expected to facilitate arithmetic performance compared to incompatible ones. The present study was designed to test this hypothesis during arithmetic problem solving using: (1) physical passive rotary whole-body motion and (2) virtual environment mimicking a similar passive body motion. Findings of the present study confirm the classical effects known to play a role in arithmetic problem solving. They also revealed that passive rotary whole-body motion - implemented physically or by virtual reality - had no particular effect on the solving of calculations. This is in contrast with previous studies that showed an influence of active head/arm or passive translational movements on numerical task performance