Uncanny sums and products may prompt “wise choices”: Semantic misalignment and numerical judgments

Ethan C Brown,Noah S Scanlon,Michèle M M Mazzocco,Luke F Rinne

doi:10.5964/jnc.v2i2.21

Abstract

Automatized arithmetic can interfere with numerical judgments, and semantic misalignment may diminish this interference. We gave 92 adults two numerical priming tasks that involved semantic misalignment. We found that misalignment either facilitated or reversed arithmetic interference effects, depending on misalignment type. On our number matching task, digit pairs (as primes for sums) appeared with nouns that were either categorically aligned and concrete (e.g., pigs, goats), categorically misaligned and concrete (e.g., eels, webs), or categorically misaligned concrete and intangible (e.g., goats, tactics). Next, participants were asked whether a target digit matched either member of the previously presented digit pair. Participants were slower to reject sum vs. neutral targets on aligned/concrete and misaligned/concrete trials, but unexpectedly slower to reject neutral versus sum targets on misaligned/concrete-intangible trials. Our sentence verification task also elicited unexpected facilitation effects. Participants read a cue sentence that contained two digits, then evaluated whether a subsequent target statement was true or false. When target statements included the product of the two preceding digits, this inhibited accepting correct targets and facilitated rejecting incorrect targets, although only when semantic context did not support arithmetic. These novel findings identify a potentially facilitative role of arithmetic in semantically misaligned contexts and highlight the complex role of contextual factors in numerical processing.

Highlights

Automatized arithmetic can interfere with numerical judgments, and semantic misalignment may diminish this interference
We used repeated measures ANOVAs to test for hypothesized main effects and interactions involving noun alignment in the Number Matching task and implication of multiplication in the Sentence Verification task
The outcome variable of interest was speed, measured by the inverse response time, consistent with prior recommendations for response latency (RT) modeling (e.g., Baayen & Milin, 2010; Ratcliff, 1993). This transformation increased the normality of the dependent variable in our Number Matching Task compared to both the untransformed data and a logarithmic transformation

Summary

Introduction

Automatized arithmetic can interfere with numerical judgments, and semantic misalignment may diminish this interference. Drawing from their work on effects of context in word problems (Bassok, Chase, & Martin, 1998) and from research on modulation of automatized cognitive processes (e.g., Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997), Bassok et al demonstrated that the LeFevre interference effect is modulated by the nouns presented with cue digits They proposed that categorically aligned noun pairs (e.g., tulips, daisies) support addition because they are appropriate to combine; whereas noun pairs do not support addition when they are either categorically misaligned (e.g., beans, planes) or related functionally but not categorically (e.g., pages, books). We propose that combinations of concrete and intangible referents are especially inconducive to automatic arithmetic because they are less likely to generate a plausible rationale for addition, compared to combinations of concrete nouns (aligned or misaligned) To test this hypothesis, we included two misaligned conditions and a categorically aligned condition in our version of the task (Figure 1c)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion