Abstract
Space is markedly involved in numerical processing, both explicitly in instrumental learning and implicitly in mental operations on numbers. Besides action decisions, action generations, and attention, the response-related effect of numerical magnitude or ordinality on space is well documented in the Spatial-Numerical Associations of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. Here, right- over left-hand responses become relatively faster with increasing magnitude positions. However, SNARC-like behavioral signatures in non-numerical tasks with ordinal information were also observed and inspired new models integrating seemingly spatial effects of ordinal and numerical metrics. To examine this issue further, we report a comparison between numerical SNARC and ordinal SNARC-like effects to investigate group-level characteristics and individual-level deductions from generalized views, i.e., convergent validity. Participants solved order-relevant (before/after classification) and order-irrelevant tasks (font color classification) with numerical stimuli 1-5, comprising both magnitude and order information, and with weekday stimuli, comprising only ordinal information. A small correlation between magnitude- and order-related SNARCs was observed, but effects are not pronounced in order-irrelevant color judgments. On the group level, order-relevant spatial-numerical associations were best accounted for by a linear magnitude predictor, whereas the SNARC effect for weekdays was categorical. Limited by the representativeness of these tasks and analyses, results are inconsistent with a single amodal cognitive mechanism that activates space in mental processing of cardinal and ordinal information alike. A possible resolution to maintain a generalized view is proposed by discriminating different spatial activations, possibly mediated by visuospatial and verbal working memory, and by relating results to findings from embodied numerical cognition.
Highlights
Space is markedly involved in numerical processing, both explicitly in instrumental learning and implicitly in mental operations on numbers
Since spatial representations are available for many different stimuli, is it plausible to assume distinct domainspecific spatial associations of numerical magnitude, weekday orders, sequences, and so on? In other words, is it possible that a domain-general mechanism drives the associations between any concept and space?
Extensive research has outlined for long that mental associations with space are involved in numerical processing, as for instance reflected in the Spatial-Numerical Associations of Response Codes (SNARC) effect (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993; Wood, Willmes, Nuerk, & Fischer, 2008)
Summary
Space is markedly involved in numerical processing, both explicitly in instrumental learning and implicitly in mental operations on numbers. SNARC-like behavioral signatures in non-numerical tasks with ordinal information were observed and inspired new models integrating seemingly spatial effects of ordinal and numerical metrics. A possible resolution to maintain a generalized view is proposed by discriminating different spatial activations, possibly mediated by visuospatial and verbal working memory, and by relating results to findings from embodied numerical cognition. The spatial involvement in processing abstract quantity of any type – e.g., in form of number, pitch, time, or force – is consistent with a common framework for magnitude (Bueti & Walsh, 2009; Walsh, 2003) and could originate from the recycling of available brain circuits (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007; Knops, Thirion, Hubbard, Michel, & Dehaene, 2009)
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