Flexible Verbal–Spatial Mapping in the Horizontal and Vertical SNARC Effects of Mainland Chinese Readers

Abstract

Abstract Traditionally, the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect was explained by assuming that the processing of numbers automatically activates internal visuospatial codes. In contrast, Gevers et al. (2010) suggested that the SNARC effect can result from both visuospatial and verbal–spatial processing, with verbal–spatial being the dominant processing mechanism. The current study tested this assumption in two experiments with the SNARC effects obtained from the horizontal and the vertical directions. Consistent with the assumption of Gevers et al., the horizontal SNARC effect is dominantly driven by verbal–spatial coding in Arabic numerals and simplified and complex Chinese numbers. More specifically, in the horizontal direction, mainland Chinese participants more dominantly associate small numbers with the verbal–spatial “left” and large numbers with the verbal–spatial “right.” But inconsistent with key predictions of Gevers et al., a remarkable association was found between small numbers with the visuospatial “top” and large numbers with the visuospatial “bottom” in the vertical SNARC effect for numbers in Arabic numerals and simplified Chinese numbers and a dominant association between small numbers with the verbal–spatial coding “bottom” and large numbers with the verbal–spatial coding “top” for complex Chinese numbers, also in the vertical SNARC effect. These findings demonstrate that verbal–spatial coding of numbers is flexible, which is plausible because of the direction-dissociative and notation-specific nature of number–space mapping.