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Abstract
In recent years, a growing amount of evidence concerning the relationships between numerical and spatial representations has been interpreted, by and large, in favour of the mental number line hypothesis—namely, the analogue continuum where numbers are spatially represented (Dehaene, Citation1992; Dehaene, Piazza, Pinel, & Cohen, Citation2003). This numerical representation is considered the core of number meaning and, accordingly, needs to be accessed whenever numbers are semantically processed. The present study explored, by means of a length reproduction task, whether besides the activation of lateralized spatial codes, numerical processing modulates the mental representation of a horizontal spatial extension. Mis-estimations of length induced by Arabic numbers are interpreted in terms of a cognitive illusion, according to which the elaboration of magnitude information brings about an expansion or compression of the mental representation of spatial extension. These results support the hypothesis that visuo-spatial resources are involved in the representation of numerical magnitude.
Acknowledgments
We thank Gelsomina Perrone for her collaboration in collecting the data for Experiment 2. This study has been supported in part by a Miur Prin 2005 Grant to Giuseppe Vallar. Maria-Dolores de Hevia has been supported in part by a QUA_SI fellowship and by a Spanish MEC-Fulbright Postdoctoral fellowship.
Notes
1 In order to minimize the effect of symbol physical differences on the perception of extensions, a font that represents each character with the same width (i.e., a nonproportional font) was used.
2 Since trials were collapsed across the two numerical distances, and, thus, the ratio differences between pairs (both within and between each numerical distance) were ignored, we separately tested the pairs 2–3 versus 2–7, 7–8 versus 3–8, 3–2 versus 7–2, and 8–7 versus 8–3 by paired t test; still, the results did not show any significant effect, all t (19) < 1.