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Sensory deprivation: visual experience alters the mental number line
Achille Pasqualotto1, Shuichiro Taya2, Michael J Proulx3
1Department of Psychology, University of Bath, United Kingdom; School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Turkey.
Behavioural Brain Research
|December 21, 2013
Summary
Visual experience shapes our understanding of numbers. People with sight associate left turns with smaller numbers and right turns with larger ones, unlike those without sight, suggesting vision
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroscience of Visual Perception
- Spatial Cognition
Background:
- The spatial organization of numbers, often conceptualized as a left-to-right 'number line' from small to large, is a fundamental aspect of numeric cognition.
- The precise origins and developmental drivers of this spatial-numerical association remain a subject of investigation, with visual experience being a potential key factor.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether the spatial-numerical association (SNA) of the number line is primarily dictated by visual experience.
- To explore the role of visual input in the development of the brain's organization for both spatial and numerical information.
Main Methods:
- A random number generation task was administered to participants with congenital blindness, late-onset blindness, and sighted individuals (blindfolded).
- Participants' heads were alternately turned left or right before they uttered a number, assessing directional biases in number generation.
- Performance was analyzed to compare number generation patterns across different visual experience groups and head-turning directions.
Main Results:
- Participants with visual experience demonstrated a bias consistent with the conventional number line: smaller numbers were generated after left turns, and larger numbers after right turns.
- Individuals without visual experience (congenitally or late blind) exhibited an opposite pattern, generating larger numbers for left turns and smaller numbers for right turns.
- This suggests that visual experience is crucial for establishing the typical left-to-right, small-to-large spatial representation of numbers.
Conclusions:
- Visual experience plays a significant role in the development of spatial and numerical representations in the brain.
- The findings support the hypothesis that the organization of the parietal cortex for numerical processing is visually driven.
- Converging evidence from this study, alongside cultural variations in number representation, highlights the profound impact of sensory experience on cognitive functions.
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