A working memory account for spatial–numerical associations

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 119; no. 1; pp. 114 - 119
• Main Authors: van Dijck, Jean-Philippe, Fias, Wim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.04.2011; Elsevier
• Subjects: Analysis of Variance; Association; Attribution Theory; Biological and medical sciences; Classification; Cognition; Concept Formation - physiology; Correlation; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Imagination - physiology; Learning. Memory; Male; Memory; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Neuropsychological Tests; Neuropsychology; Numbers; Ordinal coding; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Reaction Time - physiology; Reading Habits; Schemata (Cognition); Semantics; Short Term Memory; SNARC; Space; Space Perception - physiology; Spatial Ability; Task Analysis; Working memory; Young Adult; Space; Numbers; SNARC; Ordinal coding; Working memory; Human; Number; Coding; Cognition; Experimental study; Spatial representation
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.013

Several psychophysical and neuropsychological investigations have suggested that the mental representation of numbers takes the form of a number line along which magnitude is positioned in ascending order according to our reading habits. A longstanding debate is whether this spatial frame is triggered automatically as intrinsic part of the number semantics or whether it constitutes a short-term representation constructed during task execution. Although several observations clearly favor the working memory account, its causal involvement has not yet been demonstrated. In two experiments we show that information stored in working memory get spatially coded in function of its ordinal position in the sequence and that the spatial–numerical associations typically observed in number categorization tasks draw upon this mechanism.