Components representation of negative numbers: Evidence from auditory stimuli detection and number classification tasks

Abstract

Past research suggested that negative numbers could be represented in terms of their components in the visual modality. The present study examined the processing of negative numbers in the auditory modality and whether it is affected by context. Experiment 1 employed a stimuli detection task where only negative numbers were presented binaurally. Experiment 2 employed the same task, but both positive and negative numbers were mixed as cues. A reverse attentional spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect for negative numbers was obtained in these two experiments. Experiment 3 employed a number classification task where only negative numbers were presented binaurally. Experiment 4 employed the same task, but both positive and negative numbers were mixed. A reverse SNARC effect for negative numbers was obtained in these two experiments. These findings suggest that negative numbers in the auditory modality are generated from the set of positive numbers, thus supporting a components representation.

Keywords:

• Negative numbers
• Spatial attention
• Numerical cognition
• Mental number line

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61079004) and Innovation Funds of Graduate Programs (2011CXS049) of Shaanxi Normal University.