The SNARC Effect in the Processing of Second-Language Number Words: Further Evidence for Strong Lexico-Semantic Connections

Influence of Number Location on the SNARC Effect: Evidence From the Processing of Rotated Traditional Chinese Numerical Words

Studies have widely captured the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect in the processing of various types of numbers in which small numbers are responded to faster with the left hand than with the right hand and larger numbers are responded to faster with the right hand than with the left hand. Although a few studies have explored Arabic numbers to further investigate the influence of number location on the SNARC effect, it remains unclear whether the influence of number location on the SNARC effect is moderated by numerical semantic processing difficulty and the task performed. This study explored traditional Chinese numerical words and rotated them to certain angles, which can increase numerical semantic processing difficulty, to further investigate the influence of the stimulus-response compatibility effect and Simon effect on the SNARC effect in a space classification task (Experiment 1), numerical magnitude classification task (Experiment 2), numerical parity classification task (Experiment 3), and color classification task (Experiment 4). The results indicated that (a) the stimulus-response compatibility effect, not the SNARC effect, prevailed in the numerical space classification task; (b) the SNARC effect, not the Simon effect, prevailed in the numerical magnitude and parity classification task; and (c) the Simon effect and the SNARC effect coexisted in the color classification task. These results suggested that the influence of number location on the SNARC effect was moderated by the task performed. Implications for the theory of the SNARC effect and Simon effect are discussed.

Not all Anchors Weigh Equally

The anchoring bias is a reliable effect wherein a person's judgments are affected by initially presented information, but it is unknown specifically why this effect occurs. Research examining this bias suggests that elements of both numeric and semantic priming may be involved. To examine this, the present research used a phenomenon wherein people treat numeric information presented differently in Arabic numeral or verbal formats. We presented participants with one of many forms of an anchor that represented the same value (e.g., twelve hundred or 1,200). Thus, we could examine how a concept's meaning and its absolute numeric value affect anchoring. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that people respond to Arabic and verbal anchors differently. Experiment 3 showed that these differences occurred largely because people tend to think of numbers in digit format. This suggests that one's conceptual understanding of the anchored information matters more than its strict numeric value.

Grammatical number elicits SNARC and MARC effects as a function of task demands

Despite the robustness of the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) and linguistic markedness of response codes (MARC) effect, the mechanisms that underlie these effects are still under debate. In this paper, we investigate the extraction of quantity information from German number words and nouns inflected for singular and plural using two alternative forced choice paradigms. These paradigms are applied to different tasks to investigate how access to quantity representation is modulated by task demands. In Experiment 1, we replicated previous SNARC findings for number words—that is, a relative left-hand advantage for words denoting small numbers and a right-hand advantage for words denoting large numbers in semantic tasks (parity decision and quantity comparison). No SNARC effect was obtained for surface or lexical processing tasks (font categorization and lexical decision). In Experiment 2, we found that German words inflected for singular had a relative left-hand advantage, and German words inflected for plural a relative right-hand advantage, showing a SNARC-like effect for grammatical number. The effect interfered, however, with a MARC-like effect based on the markedness asymmetry of singulars and plurals. These two effects appear to be dissociated by response latency rather than task demands, with MARC being more pronounced in early responses and SNARC being more pronounced in late responses. The present findings shed light on the relationship of conceptual number and grammatical number and constrain current accounts of the SNARC and MARC effects.

It takes just one word to quash a SNARC

Our directional reading habit seems to contribute to the widely reported association of small numbers with left space and larger numbers with right space (the spatial-numerical association of response codes, SNARC, effect). But how can this association be so flexible when reading habits are not? To address this question, we asked bilingual Russian-Hebrew readers to classify numbers by parity and alternated the number format from trial to trial between written words and Arabic digits. The number words were randomly printed in either Cyrillic or Hebrew script, thus inducing left-to-right or right-to-left reading, respectively. Classification performance indicated that the digits were spatially mapped when they followed a Russian word but not when they followed a Hebrew word. An auditory control experiment revealed left-to-right SNARC effects with different strengths in both languages. These results suggest that the SNARC effect reflects recent spatial experiences, cross-modal associations, and long-standing directional habits but not an attribute of the number concepts themselves.