 People trained to use a soroban often learn to do mental arithmetic by visualizing an abacus and imagining moving beads on it in accordance with the procedures learned for arithmetical calculations (Frank and Barner 2012). Mental abacus (MA), as this kind of mental arithmetic is known, compares favourably with other kinds of mental calculation for speed and accuracy (Kojima 1954) and MA users are often found among the medallists in the Mental Calculation World Cup.