An evaluation of sex and cultural differences in arithmetic retrieval-induced forgetting

ABSTRACT

Retrieval practice of arithmetic facts (e.g. 2 × 3) can interfere with retrieval of other, closely related arithmetic facts (e.g. 2 + 3), increasing response time (RT) and errors for these problems. Here we examined potential sex and culture-related differences in arithmetic retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). This was motivated by re-analyses of several published arithmetic RIF data sets that appeared to show that the effect occurred for women but not men. Experiment 1 (n = 72) tested for possible sex differences in a diverse but predominantly Canadian university sample. Experiment 2 (n = 48) examined potential sex differences in native Chinese participants, which previous research indicated may not be susceptible to the RIF effect for a particular subset of small addition problems (sum ≤ 10). In Experiment 1, we found no evidence that the addition RIF effect differed between male and female adults. In Experiment 2, the Chinese adults showed RIF for tie problems (e.g. 2 + 2, 3 + 3, etc.) regardless of sex, but neither sex presented RIF for small non-tie addition problems. The results indicated that the RIF effect is not gender specific, and there might not be strong memory retrieval competition between addition and multiplication facts for non-tie problems in Chinese adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Arithmetic
• retrieval-induced forgetting
• individual differences
• sex
• culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Rule-related problems are solved by applying a rule (e.g. 0 + N = N). Note that here 1 + N problems are believed to be fact problems (Campbell & Beech, 2014; Chen & Campbell, 2014, 2016) because their answer varies, but here we define them as rule-related problems because their counterparts are rule-based 1 × N problems.

2 When we examined 0 + N and 1 + N problems separately, neither presented a significant RT difference with multiplication counterparts practiced vs. unpracticed.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.