Abstract
What is bigger, an elephant or a mouse? This question can be answered without seeing the two animals, since these objects elicit conceptual magnitude. How is an object’s conceptual magnitude processed? It was suggested that conceptual magnitude is automatically processed; namely, irrelevant conceptual magnitude can affect performance when comparing physical magnitudes. The current study further examined this question and aimed to expand the understanding of automaticity of conceptual magnitude. Two different objects were presented and participants were asked to decide which object was larger on the screen (physical magnitude) or in the real world (conceptual magnitude), in separate blocks. By creating congruent (the conceptually larger object was physically larger) and incongruent (the conceptually larger object was physically smaller) pairs of stimuli it was possible to examine the automatic processing of each magnitude. A significant congruity effect was found for both magnitudes. Furthermore, quartile analysis revealed that the congruity was affected similarly by processing time for both magnitudes. These results suggest that the processing of conceptual and physical magnitudes is automatic to the same extent. The results support recent theories suggested that different types of magnitude processing and representation share the same core system.
Highlights
What is bigger, an elephant or a mouse? This question can be answered without seeing the two animals, since these objects elicit conceptual magnitude
Two different objects were presented and participants were asked to decide which object was larger on the screen or in the real world, in separate blocks
Participants whose ACCs were larger than 2 standard deviations (SD) from the average ACC were excluded; this resulted in one participant being excluded
Summary
An elephant or a mouse? This question can be answered without seeing the two animals, since these objects elicit conceptual magnitude. The effect of the irrelevant (to-be-ignored) dimension on performance is an indication of this dimension’s automaticity Such conflict tasks were used to ask if magnitudes are processed automatically. Group of participants were indepenently presented with drawings of pairs of objects that appeared in different physical magnitudes and were asked to indicate which one was conceptually larger This design created congruent (e.g., a physically small lamp compard with a physically large zebra) and incongruent )e.g., a physically large lamp compard to a physically small zebra) conditions. It was found that congruity modulated RT; namely, congruent trials were significantly faster than incongruent trials These findings were taken as evidence for the automatic processing of physical magnitude, which was processed when irrelevant to the task. In separate blocks of trials, participants were directed to choose the larger stimulus according to either the physical
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