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Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

Perceiving numbers does not cause automatic shifts of spatial attention.

Enrico Fattorini¹, Mario Pinto¹, Francesca Rotondaro¹

¹Dipartimento di Psicologia 39, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Roma, Italy; Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy.

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior

|November 2, 2015

Summary

The Attentional SNARC effect, suggesting numbers have a left-to-right spatial code, was unreliable and not replicated. Number-space interactions likely stem from response or memory factors, not automatic attention shifts.

Keywords:

Attention Individual differences Mental Number Line Numbers SNARC

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Numerical Cognition

Background:

The spatial representation of numbers is often theorized to follow a left-to-right organization in the brain.
The Attentional SNARC (Att-SNARC) effect posits that number perception automatically shifts spatial attention, with small numbers orienting left and large numbers orienting right.

Purpose of the Study:

To rigorously test the consistency and reliability of the Attentional SNARC effect.
To investigate whether number perception directly influences spatial attention or if number-space interactions occur at different cognitive processing stages.
To examine the role of the Att-SNARC in established SNARC effects within Parity Judgement (PJ) and Magnitude Comparison (MC) tasks.

Main Methods:

Three studies were conducted with a total of 60 participants.
Participants completed tasks assessing the Attentional SNARC effect, alongside PJ and MC tasks.
Reliability was assessed using split-half tests, and direct influence was tested by presenting targets laterally in a MC-SNARC task.

Main Results:

The Attentional SNARC effect was consistently not found across studies, and its reliability was poor.
Strong and reliable SNARC effects were observed in PJ and MC tasks.
No correlation was found between the Attentional SNARC and the reliable SNARC effects.
A significant Att-SNARC was observed only when participants recalled number positions on a ruler, but this finding lacked reliability.

Conclusions:

Number perception does not automatically trigger spatial attention shifts (Att-SNARC effect is not a reliable phenomenon).
Number-space interactions in tasks like PJ and MC are not modulated by automatic attentional shifts.
The spatial representation of numbers likely arises from response-related or strategic memory-based processes, with response-related factors yielding more stable representations.