Abstract
Right hand responds faster than left hand when shown larger numbers and vice-versa when shown smaller numbers (the SNARC effect). Accumulating evidence suggests that the SNARC effect may not be exclusive for numbers and can be extended to other ordinal sequences (e.g., months or letters in the alphabet) as well. In this study, we tested the SNARC effect with a non-numerically ordered sequence: the Chinese notations for the color spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet). Chinese color word sequence reserves relatively weak ordinal information, because each element color in the sequence normally appears in non-sequential contexts, making it ideal to test the spatial organization of sequential information that was stored in the long-term memory. This study found a reliable SNARC-like effect for Chinese color words (deciding whether the presented color word was before or after the reference color word “green”), suggesting that, without access to any quantitative information or exposure to any previous training, ordinal representation can still activate a sense of space. The results support that weak ordinal information without quantitative magnitude encoded in the long-term memory can activate spatial representation in a comparison task.
Highlights
One of the hottest recent debates in cognitive psychology is whether or not symbolic processing, such as the representation of numbers and concepts, causes mental/bodily simulation of perceptual features or properties of linguistic symbols beyond mere semantic processing (Barsalou, 1999)
The results revealed Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Cognitive Development (Code) (SNARC) effects, suggesting that the ordinal information for numeric and non-numeric sequences, temporarily stored in the working memory, was coded spatially
The purpose of the study was to examine whether Chinese color words were able to activate the spatial coding of orderly information in the working memory, as were those heavily trained or temporarily memorized
Summary
One of the hottest recent debates in cognitive psychology is whether or not symbolic processing, such as the representation of numbers and concepts, causes mental/bodily simulation of perceptual features or properties (e.g., space or location) of linguistic symbols beyond mere semantic processing (Barsalou, 1999). The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC; Dehaene et al, 1993) effect reveals that symbols such as numerals are spatially encoded and that magnitude interacts with representational space (Walsh, 2003). This left-to-right representation of small vs large numerical magnitudes was both internally distributed in the mental number line (Restle, 1970) as well as externally distributed in the physical environment, as most cultures that share left-to-right reading/writing direction favor the small-to-large number alignment in that direction. In reverse, seeing smaller or larger numbers can influence random lateral movement, such as smaller numbers stimulating leftward movement and larger numbers causing opposite stimulation (Vicario, 2012)
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