Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Directional and Non-directional Spatial-Numerical Associations across the Lifespan

There is accumulating evidence suggesting an association of numbers with physical space. However, the origin of such spatial-numerical associations (SNAs) is still debated. In the present study we investigated the development of two SNAs in a cross-sectional study involving children, young and middle-aged adults as well as the elderly: (1) the SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect, reflecting a directional SNA; and (2) the numerical bisection bias in a line bisection task with numerical flankers. Results revealed a consistent SNARC effect in all age groups that continuously increased with age. In contrast, a numerical bisection bias was only observed for children and elderly participants, implying an U-shaped distribution of this bias across age groups. Additionally, individual SNARC effects and numerical bisection biases did not correlate significantly. We argue that the SNARC effect seems to be influenced by longer-lasting experiences of cultural constraints such as reading and writing direction and may thus reflect embodied representations. Contrarily, the numerical bisection bias may originate from insufficient inhibition of the semantic influence of irrelevant numerical flankers, which should be more pronounced in children and elderly people due to development and decline of cognitive control, respectively. As there is an ongoing debate on the origins of SNAs in general and the SNARC effect in particular, the present results are discussed in light of these differing accounts in an integrative approach. However, taken together, the present pattern of results suggests that different cognitive mechanisms underlie the SNARC effect and the numerical bisection bias.