Abstract
A core proposition in numerical cognition is numbers are represented spatially. Evidence for this proposition comes from the “spatial numerical association of response codes” effect (SNARC) in which faster responses are made by the left/right hand judging whether one of a pair of Arabic digits is smaller/larger than the other. Less is known if a similar SNARC effect exists for non-symbolic magnitudes; and research that has been conducted used stimuli which could be translated into symbolic terms. To overcome this limitation, we employed a referent-to-target judgment paradigm in which a referent dot array (n = 30 dots) was follow by a second array of dots (e.g., n = 45 or 15 dots)–participants judged if the second array contained fewer or more dots than the referent array. Dot arrays with fewer dots were judged more quickly with the left hand compared to the right hand (i.e., a SNARC effect). Not all participants demonstrated a SNARC effect, however. Neither visuospatial working memory nor math ability was associated with the presence/absence of a non-symbolic SNARC effect. Implications of the non-symbolic SNARC effect for accounts of numerical cognition are discussed.
Highlights
The brain appears to associate numbers with spatial locations: smaller numbers are associated with the left side of space and larger numbers with the right side
We found a significant interaction between Hand and Magnitude (F(1,27) = 6.29, p = .018, η2 = .19), which supports the existence of a non-symbolic spatial-numerical association of response codes” (SNARC)-like effect
This study investigated whether a non-symbolic SNARC effect is evident in large magnitude dot arrays in a referent-to-target judgement paradigm
Summary
The brain appears to associate numbers with spatial locations: smaller numbers are associated with the left side of space and larger numbers with the right side. The “spatial-numerical association of response codes” (SNARC) illustrates this association: The speed of magnitude judgement differs as a function of the hand used to make the judgement [1]. It has been suggested the SNARC effect activates a cognitive representation of number and occurs because of the association between the spatial code of the side of response and the magnitude of the number [2,3,4,5]. The SNARC effect is found for visual number words, auditory number words [6], double-digit numbers [7], and negative numbers [8].
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