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Non-symbolic and symbolic number lines are dissociated

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Abstract

People use mental number lines for both symbolic numerals and numerosity, but little is known about how these two mental number lines are related. The current study investigated the association in effect size, directionality of the mental number line, and development between symbolic and non-symbolic mental number lines to determine if they were related to or independent from each other. We collected data from numerosity- and digit-matching tasks that used the following numbers: 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, and 29. Tasks were performed by college undergraduates and the fifth-grade primary school students. The results showed that none of the effects for non-symbolic numbers was related to any of the effects for symbolic numbers, and vice versa, in both adults and children. Another notable finding was that the correlation between the SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response code) effect size and mathematical ability was negative in the adult group. These results are consistent with the dissociated processes hypothesis and suggest that mental number lines are notation-dependent. As shown by the SNARC effect, the mental number line might result in interference in the current task by an automatically activated spatial notation-dependent representation of numbers.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the 111 Project (Grant number BP0719032).

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Author notes

  1. Xingcheng He, Pengpeng Guo and Shuyi Li have contributed to the study equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Xingcheng He, Pengpeng Guo, Shuyi Li & Xinlin Zhou

  2. Research School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Xingcheng He, Pengpeng Guo & Shuyi Li

  3. College of Education, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China

    Xiaojing Shen

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  1. Xingcheng He
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Correspondence to Xinlin Zhou.

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XH, PG, SL, XS, and XZ declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the institutional review board at the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University.

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He, X., Guo, P., Li, S. et al. Non-symbolic and symbolic number lines are dissociated. Cogn Process 22, 475–486 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01019-4

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