Abstract
The event-related potential technique was used to investigate the time course and scalp-potential topography for the numerical distance effect in a number-matching task. Twenty undergraduates judged whether a number matched or did not match another number presented 1.5 s earlier. Compared with number pairs with a 'small' numerical distance (distance=1), number pairs with a 'large' numerical distance (greater than 2) showed a longer latency and a greater positive amplitude in the N240 component. This numerical distance effect was limited to fronto-central electrodes. These results were discussed in terms of the neural bases of the numerical distance effect during the automatic processing of numbers.
Highlights
The numerical distance effect was discovered by Moyer and Landauer in 1967 when they found that people responded more slowly when comparing number pairs that were closer to each other (e.g. 5 vs. 6, with a ‘small’ numerical distance of 1) than when comparing those that were farther away from each other (e.g. 1 vs. 9, with a ‘large’ distance of 8) [1]
According to the analogue models [1,5], numbers are posited on an analogue mental number line and the number pairs with a small numerical distance between them would have overlapping neural activation and be more difficult to discriminate than those with a large distance
Pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni adjustment showed that reaction times (RTs) were longer during the trials with both types of nonmatched numbers than during those with matched numbers
Summary
The numerical distance effect was discovered by Moyer and Landauer in 1967 when they found that people responded more slowly when comparing number pairs that were closer to each other (e.g. 5 vs. 6, with a ‘small’ numerical distance of 1) than when comparing those that were farther away from each other (e.g. 1 vs. 9, with a ‘large’ distance of 8) [1]. Different explanations have been proposed to account for the numerical distance effect [4]. According to the analogue models [1,5], numbers are posited on an analogue mental number line and the number pairs with a small numerical distance between them would have overlapping neural activation and be more difficult to discriminate than those with a large distance. As the magnitude information of a number is embedded in its location on the analogue mental number line, the existence of numerical distance effect has been considered as reflecting the processing of numbers’ magnitude information. Researchers have used the numerical distance effect to investigate neural bases of the processing of numbers’ semantics or magnitude [6,7,8,9]
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