Your neighbors define your value: A study of spatial bias in number comparison

Samuel Shaki; Martin H. Fischer

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.01.004

Your neighbors define your value: A study of spatial bias in number comparison

Samuel Shaki, Martin H. Fischer

Department of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Several chronometric biases in numerical cognition have informed our understanding of a mental number line (MNL). Complementing this approach, we investigated spatial performance in a magnitude comparison task. Participants located the larger or smaller number of a pair on a horizontal line representing the interval from 0 to 10. Experiments 1 and 2 used only number pairs one unit apart and found that digits were localized farther to the right with "select larger" instructions than with "select smaller" instructions. However, when numerical distance was varied (Experiment 3), digits were localized away from numerically near neighbors. This repulsion effect reveals context-specific distortions in number representation not previously noticed with chronometric measures.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	308-313
Number of pages	6
Journal	Acta Psychologica
Volume	142
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.01.004
State	Published - Mar 2013

Keywords

Magnitude comparison
Mental number line
Numerical cognition
Spatial bias

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10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.01.004

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Your neighbors define your value: A study of spatial bias in number comparison

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Keywords

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