On the interaction of numerical and size information in digit comparison: a behavioral and event-related potential...

To investigate effects of dimensional congruity in digit comparison processes we recorded response latencies, error rates and event-related potentials (ERPs) in a situation when the relevant and the irrelevant dimension of judgement, the digit's physical size or its numerical value, varied unpredictably from trial to trial. Congruity effects may arise at early processing stages, where both numerical and size information are mapped onto a common, integrated representation. Alternatively, numerical and size information may be processed in functionally independent channels and interact only at a later stage of response activation. For both, numerical and size comparisons, reliable distance effects on ERPs (starting 224 ms post-stimulus at frontal electrode sites) and on behavioral data were observed. Congruity effects follow a timecourse that mirror-images the temporal pattern found for the distance effects: while distance effects on difference potentials start about 64 ms earlier for numerical comparisons, congruity effects due to the irrelevant attribute are seen about 88 ms earlier for size comparisons. While Lateralized Readiness Potentials (LRPs) for incongruent trials are shifted in time, there was no indication of an activation for the incorrect response in incongruent trials, as an account of congruity effects in terms of response competition would predict. The most parsimonious explanation of our results is that numerical and size information are extracted in parallel, are both converted into an integrated representation and potentially interact during these early parallel stages.