Small numerosities are associated with the left, large numerosities are associated with the right: Evidence from a SNARC task
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1
University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, Australia
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2
University of Melbourne, School of Psychological Sciences, Australia
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3
Flinders University, School of Psychology, Australia
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4
University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, Australia
A central finding within numerical cognition is that symbolic numbers (e.g. Arabic numerals) are represented spatially with smaller numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes, or 'SNARC' effect). This study explored whether non-symbolic numbers, i.e. dot cloud stimuli of varying numerosities, are also represented spatially. Participants judged whether a briefly presented dot cloud stimulus contained more or less dots than a reference dot cloud. It was predicted that dot clouds with less (more) dots would be categorised more quickly with the left (right) hand. This effect was observed, but may have been due to numerosity per se, or total dot surface area, which co-varied with numerosity in the initial experiment. To disambiguate between these two possibilities, a follow-up experiment was conducted in which total dot surface area was held constant as numerosity increased. The effect remained, suggesting that non-symbolic numbers are also represented spatially.
Keywords:
SNARC effect,
magnitude representation,
Keywords: Numerical Cognition,
Non-symbolic numerosity,
Number- space associations
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Cognition and Executive Processes
Citation:
Nemeh
F,
Yates
M,
Loetscher
T,
Ma-Wyatt
A and
Nicholls
ME
(2015). Small numerosities are associated with the left, large numerosities are associated with the right: Evidence from a SNARC task.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00225
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Mark Yates, University of Melbourne, School of Psychological Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, mjyates@unmelb.edu.au