Individuals with low arithmetic abilities are sensitive to interference during knowledge retrieval from long-term memory across different domains

Abstract

Individuals show large individual differences in arithmetic abilities, especially in arithmetic facts. However, it is still unclear if individual differences in these abilities can be explained through individual differences in sensitivity to interference during retrieval from the associative network, and whether this sensitivity to interference is domain-general. To this end, we compared 18 adults with low arithmetic abilities with 18 intelligence matched individuals with high arithmetic abilities in two arithmetic and one lexico-semantic task. While individuals with low arithmetic abilities performed worse (longer response time and lower accuracy) on related lures, where interference occurs, individuals with high arithmetic abilities performed equally well on related and unrelated lures. This pattern of results emerged in the arithmetic tasks as well as in the lexico-semantic task. This finding indicates that sensitivity to interference is a domain-general construct hindering the selective retrieval of information from long-term memory in individuals with low arithmetic abilities.