Holistic representation of negative numbers is formed when needed for the task

Abstract

Past research suggested that negative numbers are represented in terms of their components—the polarity marker and the number (e.g., Fischer & Rottmann, 2005; Ganor-Stern & Tzelgov, 2008). The present study shows that a holistic representation is formed when needed for the task requirement. Specifically, performing the numerical comparison task on positive and negative numbers presented sequentially required participants to hold both the polarity and the number magnitude in memory. Such a condition resulted in a holistic representation of negative numbers, as indicated by the distance and semantic congruity effects. This holistic representation was added to the initial components representation, thus producing a hybrid holistic-components representation.

Keywords:

• Negative numbers
• Numerical processing
• Numerical cognition
• Holistic representation

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 662/06 to D.G.S. and Grant 1664/08 for the Center for the Study of the Neurocognitive Basis of Numerical Cognition). We wish to thank Shirley DeGarcea and Lital Oliker for their help in running the experiments.

Notes

¹We did not use the SNARC effect as an indicator for a holistic processing as this effect is not found among Hebrew speakers, probably because Hebrew is read from right to left (Shaki, Fischer, & Petrusic, 2009).

²In our sequential conditions, in every trial participants had to decide whether the current number was smaller or larger than the former, so strictly speaking, the effect we were looking at was the effect of response code and not that of instructions, as is usually the case for the semantic congruity effect. However, as conceptually it should influence performance in a similar manner, we refer to this effect as the semantic congruity effect.