Abstract
The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) suggests the existence of an association between number magnitude and response position, with faster left-key responses to small numbers and faster right-key responses to large numbers. The attentional SNARC effect (Att-SNARC) suggests that perceiving numbers can also affect the allocation of spatial attention, causing a leftward (vs. rightward) target detection advantage after perceiving small (vs. large) numbers. Considering previous findings that revealed similar spatial association effects for both numbers and musical note values (i.e., the relative duration of notes), the aim of this study is to investigate whether presenting note values instead of numbers causes a spatial shift of attention in musicians. The results show an advantage in detecting a leftward (vs. rightward) target after perceiving small (vs. large) musical note values. The fact that musical note values cause a spatial shift of attention strongly suggests that musicians process numbers and note values in a similar manner.
Highlights
The SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect [1] is taken as a major evidence of the coupling between numbers and space
This study showed that, to what happens with gaze direction and arrows, participants showed an inhibition of return (IOR) at longer delays between stimulus and target presentation
The predictor variable was the musical note value, whereas the criterion variable was the difference between the reaction time (RT) in detecting the right and the left targets: dRT = RT(right target) − RT(left target)
Summary
The SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect [1] is taken as a major evidence of the coupling between numbers and space. The authors suggested that this effect is due to a direct correspondence between the position of a number on a spatially oriented mental number line [2] and the response position in the external space. The SNARC has been consistently demonstrated over time, both using tasks where the number magnitude was relevant (e.g., magnitude comparison [3]) and irrelevant (e.g., orientation judgment [4]). Other studies [7,8] suggest that mapping numerical magnitudes in a left-to-right fashion can be a universal cognitive strategy independent from cultural factors
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