Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 15, 2025
Investigating the Effects of Antipsychotics and Schizotypy on the N400 Using Event-Related Potentials and Semantic Categorization
Published on: November 19, 2014
The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect in highly math-anxious individuals: An ERP study
M I Núñez-Peña1, À Colomé2, B González-Gómez3
1Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology (Quantitative Psychology Section), Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Spain; Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Spain; Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Spain.
Abstract:
The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect was examined in highly (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals performing a number comparison in an ERP study. The SNARC effect consists of faster latencies when the response side is congruent with number location in the mental number line (MNL). Despite the stronger SNARC effect in the HMA group, their responses in incongruent trials were slower than in congruent trials only for the largest numerical magnitudes. Moreover, HMAs showed a less positive centroparietal P3b component in incongruent trials than in congruent ones, but only for the largest magnitudes. Since the SNARC effect arises during response selection and P3b positivity decreases with the difficulty of decision, this result suggests that HMA individuals might find it more difficult than LMAs to control the conflict between the automatically activated location of numbers in the MNL and the response side, especially in more cognitively demanding trials.
