Abstract
A strong link between bodily activity and number processing has been established in recent years. Although numerous observations indicate that adults use finger counting (FC) in various contexts of everyday life for different purposes, existing knowledge of FC routines and their use is still limited. In particular, it remains unknown how stable the (default) FC habits are over time and how flexible they can be. To investigate these questions, 380 Polish participants completed a questionnaire on their FC routines, the stability of these routines, and the context of FC usage, preceded by the request to count on their fingers from 1 to 10. Next, the test–retest stability of FC habits was examined in 84 participants 2 months following the first session. To the best of our knowledge, such a study design has been adopted for the first time. The results indicate that default FC routines of the majority of participants (75%) are relatively stable over time. At the same time, FC routines can flexibly adapt according to the situation (e.g., when holding an object). As regards prevalence, almost all participants, in line with previous findings on Western individuals, declared starting from the closed palm and extending consecutive fingers. Furthermore, we observed relations between FC preferences and handedness (more left-handers start from the left hand) and that actual finger use is still widespread in healthy adults for a variety of activities (the most prevalent uses of FC are listing elements, presenting arguments and plans, and calendar calculations). In sum, the results show the practical relevance of FC in adulthood, the relative stability of preferences over time along with flexible adaptation to a current situation, as well as an association of FC routines with handedness. Taken together our results suggest that FC is the phenomenon, which is moderated or mediated by multiple embodied factors.
Highlights
A large proportion of adults use finger counting ( FC) in various contexts, such as calendar calculations, counting perceived objects, enumeration, or to communicate small numbers to other people
Most participants declared in a questionnaire that their FC routines were stable, and we observed congruency in responses to different items asking about this consistency
Since previous reports did not directly address neither declared nor actual stability of FC routines, we investigated this issues in our survey
Summary
A large proportion of adults use finger counting ( FC) in various contexts, such as calendar calculations, counting perceived objects, enumeration, or to communicate small numbers to other people (e.g., one usually shows two fingers at the same time as saying “two beers please” in a noisy pub; see Pika, Nicoladis & Marentette, 2009; Bender & Beller, 2011). This observation constitutes the starting point for systematic inquiries into the nature of FC. Contemporary studies on FC are extensively carried out in children, and in educated adults
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