Popular in Psychology

Most Cited

The adapted mind

Dalhousie University Jerome Barkow

Psychology

Consumers’ pursuit of material and experiential purchases

Cornell University Tom Gilovich

Experimental Psychology

Time to investigate human visual shape perception

University of Montreal Martin Arguin

Most Cited

James S. Jackson and the program for research on Black Americans

Harvard University David R. Williams

Psychology

Violence and Mental Illness: Rethinking Risk Factors and Enhancing Public Safety

Duke University Eric Elbogen

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive remediation – where are we now and what should we do next?

King's College London Til Wykes

Cognitive Psychology

Harnessing Plasticity in the Atypical Developing Brain using Neurostimulation

University of Surrey Roi Cohen Kadosh

Non-symbolic numerosities

View more insights in Social Sciences - Psychology - Experimental Psychology

View more figures from University of Aberdeen

View the page of Sandie Cleland

Read the Study

Next in Experimental Psychology

Seasonal variations in auditory processing in the inferior colliculus of Eptesicus fuscus

Ellen Covey | University of Washington

Exploring the associations between social support and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder among Malaysian and Australian trauma survivors

Laura Jobson | Monash University

Sandie Cleland argues that non-symbolic representations of number do not offer a direct and automatic route to numerical-spatial associations.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 11, 2024

Log-in or Sign-up to Faculti
Currently viewing this subject insight as a guest. You have insight(s) remaining for this month. Login to view 8000+ figures on the platform.

Generating Workspace...

Export as PDF

This video video discusses a series of experiments exploring the concept of spatial numerical associations known as **snark effects**—the tendency for people to associate smaller numbers with the left side of space and larger numbers with the right. This video video phenomenon was previously observed in children, and the study aimed to investigate whether similar effects could be replicated in adults using both symbolic (like digits and number words) and non-symbolic numerical representations (like arrays of objects).

The researchers conducted four experiments where participants had to respond to the presence of upright or inverted triangles displayed in varying quantities. The expectation was that responses would be faster for smaller numbers with the left hand and larger numbers with the right due to the mental number line hypothesis.

However, contrary to previous findings, the results showed no evidence of snark effects in adults, regardless of the number of triangles displayed or other stimulus variations. This video video failure to replicate the observed effects raises questions about the nature of how adults process numerical quantities. The authors highlighted the importance of replicating research findings in psychology and suggested that differences in learning and exposure to numerical systems might influence how adults engage with quantities compared to children.

The ongoing research seeks to explore whether the memorability or familiarity of certain representations influences the presence of snark effects, indicating a potential distinction between learned symbolic numbers and non-symbolic numerical cognition.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.285 --> 00:00.565
Snarks.

00:00.565 --> 00:03.565
So a spatial numerical association of response codes.

00:04.225 --> 00:07.805
Um, so what it's is, it's linked to the fact

00:07.805 --> 00:11.285
that people seem to have a fundamental link between number

00:11.385 --> 00:14.085
and space when they, kind

00:14.085 --> 00:15.765
of think about the world when they encounter number.

00:16.545 --> 00:18.765
So when people perform tasks where they have

00:18.765 --> 00:21.045
to reason about, digits

00:21.065 --> 00:25.085
or number words, they behave as though they have, well,

00:25.085 --> 00:27.045
it's sometimes called a mental number line,

00:27.255 --> 00:29.645
which you could almost think of as like a, a,

00:29.765 --> 00:31.965
a representation of a ruler in their mind

00:32.335 --> 00:34.805
where they associate small numbers with the left side

00:34.805 --> 00:36.605
of space and larger numbers

00:36.715 --> 00:38.565
with the right hand side of space.

00:39.105 --> 00:41.405
So kind of the kinda classic demonstration

00:41.405 --> 00:43.845
of this is if you ask people to perform a task

00:43.845 --> 00:47.085
where they have to respond to a digit on a screen.

00:47.185 --> 00:49.205
So for example, they see a digit

00:49.205 --> 00:50.805
and they have to press one button of it,

00:50.805 --> 00:53.245
that even number and another button.

00:53.245 --> 00:56.125
If it's an odd number, what we tend to find is

00:56.125 --> 00:59.085
that people are faster to respond to smaller numbers

00:59.085 --> 01:01.805
with their left hand, and they're faster to respond

01:01.825 --> 01:03.725
to larger numbers with their right hand.

01:04.305 --> 01:07.005
Now, what that suggests to us is that there's a,

01:07.115 --> 01:09.245
this fundamental link between number

01:09.265 --> 01:10.445
and space and cognition.

01:10.905 --> 01:13.045
Um, yeah, as I said, it's called this mental number line

01:13.045 --> 01:15.085
that seems to go from the left to the right,

01:15.375 --> 01:18.125
where we associate smaller numbers with the left side

01:18.125 --> 01:20.965
of space and larger numbers with the right side of space.

01:21.145 --> 01:23.525
So with this study, what we were really interested in was

01:23.525 --> 01:27.125
whether the form of the representation of number mattered.

01:27.125 --> 01:29.285
So there's lots of different ways that you might encounter

01:30.045 --> 01:31.685
numerical information in life, right?

01:31.705 --> 01:34.765
You might see a digit, you might hear a spoken number word,

01:34.825 --> 01:37.125
you might see a plane card or a dice.

01:37.835 --> 01:41.725
What we were interested in is when you encounter quantities

01:42.035 --> 01:43.365
that aren't easily labeled.

01:43.505 --> 01:46.565
So in the paper we call these non-symbolic quantities.

01:46.945 --> 01:48.765
So this is just a collection of object.

01:49.385 --> 01:51.655
Now, in a previous study that we'd published,

01:51.765 --> 01:54.335
we'd found some evidence that you get snark effects

01:54.395 --> 01:55.935
for those types of quantities.

01:56.515 --> 01:59.335
Um, and, and what we'd done was we'd asked people to respond

01:59.355 --> 02:02.335
to between one and nine triangles on a screen.

02:02.915 --> 02:04.655
And what people had to do was they just had

02:04.655 --> 02:06.215
to indicate whether right and left hand,

02:06.245 --> 02:08.095
whether the triangles were upright

02:08.235 --> 02:09.455
or whether they were inverted.

02:09.875 --> 02:11.855
And we were interested in whether the quantity

02:11.955 --> 02:14.735
of triangles impacted how people perform the task.

02:15.235 --> 02:17.015
So in this previous study, we'd found

02:17.015 --> 02:19.255
that when you saw a small number of triangles,

02:19.475 --> 02:20.895
you were faster with your left hand.

02:21.285 --> 02:23.215
When you saw a large number of triangles,

02:23.355 --> 02:24.775
you were faster with your right hand.

02:24.835 --> 02:27.055
And we thought, this is great. This is really interesting.

02:27.685 --> 02:30.095
This suggests that the, you know, the form of

02:30.095 --> 02:32.695
that numerical representation, it, it doesn't matter.

02:33.155 --> 02:34.575
We still get this snark effect,

02:34.585 --> 02:37.655
which is we hadn't really seen in adult participants before.

02:38.155 --> 02:40.815
So in this paper, what we wanted to do though was to try

02:40.815 --> 02:42.175
and replicate that finding

02:42.175 --> 02:43.215
because it's, you know, it's

02:43.215 --> 02:45.655
so important in psychology research that we try

02:45.655 --> 02:46.935
and replicate our findings

02:46.935 --> 02:48.175
because we'd only shown this once.

02:48.595 --> 02:50.695
So that was really what this paper was about, trying,

02:51.245 --> 02:53.135
finding debate

02:58.820 --> 03:01.325
Whether, you know,

03:01.355 --> 03:04.005
what we call symbolic representations of quantities.

03:04.025 --> 03:06.605
So digit number words, things that are learned

03:06.625 --> 03:07.725
and culturally specific,

03:08.035 --> 03:10.085
whether those are processed in the same way

03:10.085 --> 03:11.765
as these non-symbolic quantities.

03:12.305 --> 03:13.845
Um, and so it kind of, it,

03:13.875 --> 03:15.965
it's really feeding into that literature.

03:15.985 --> 03:18.245
Do, do we, do we process them in the same way?

03:18.745 --> 03:21.605
Now, the interesting thing is that in, in young children,

03:22.425 --> 03:25.045
we do find that young children associate,

03:25.245 --> 03:27.805
non-symbolic number with these kind of, kind

03:27.805 --> 03:29.085
of spatial aspects.

03:29.225 --> 03:32.285
So children, prefer right sided responses

03:32.285 --> 03:33.605
for large groups of objects

03:33.825 --> 03:36.845
and left sided responses for smaller groups of objects.

03:37.185 --> 03:39.125
It hadn't really been shown in adults though.

03:39.425 --> 03:41.685
So what wasn't entirely clear was whether

03:42.485 --> 03:44.965
snark effects were linked to these effects that you see in,

03:44.965 --> 03:47.685
in young children, or whether there's something that's more

03:48.185 --> 03:51.245
to do with learning about how numbers work and school.

03:51.585 --> 03:53.765
And there's some evidence that says that it could be,

03:54.145 --> 03:56.005
you know, something to do with our education,

03:56.005 --> 03:58.405
because we know that in languages

03:58.435 --> 04:00.285
that are written from right to left,

04:00.585 --> 04:02.445
the snark effect tends to reverse.

04:02.795 --> 04:04.845
Okay? So we're kind of trying to get, you know,

04:04.845 --> 04:06.645
what's actually going on in adult participants.

04:06.705 --> 04:09.205
Do they, do they behave the same way as, as children do

04:09.205 --> 04:10.365
with these types of quantities?

04:10.585 --> 04:13.525
The four experiments were, were really, really similar.

04:14.225 --> 04:15.725
So in all of the experiments,

04:15.725 --> 04:18.485
what people did was they saw these, triangles.

04:18.485 --> 04:20.285
They were either upright or inverted.

04:20.495 --> 04:23.045
There were between one and nine triangles in each trial,

04:23.345 --> 04:25.365
and they just had a, you know, a left sided response

04:25.385 --> 04:26.565
and a right sided response.

04:26.585 --> 04:28.325
So upright, inverted,

04:28.325 --> 04:30.285
and this was swapped around for the participants.

04:31.375 --> 04:33.955
The differences between the studies were really to do

04:33.955 --> 04:36.955
with quite, low level aspects of the stimuli.

04:37.535 --> 04:40.315
So, for example, if I have a triangle,

04:40.335 --> 04:43.835
if I have one triangle and then I have nine triangles, just

04:43.835 --> 04:46.515
because you, you know, if the triangles are the same size,

04:46.935 --> 04:49.195
the nine triangles are just gonna cover more

04:49.195 --> 04:51.275
of the screen than the one triangle, right?

04:51.935 --> 04:52.955
And what we want to know,

04:52.985 --> 04:55.675
what we're interested in is really whether it's the number

04:55.775 --> 04:58.275
that's important rather than just kind

04:58.275 --> 04:59.955
of visual properties of the stimuli.

05:00.455 --> 05:03.315
So, for it, so, so two of the studies were really trying

05:03.315 --> 05:04.795
to get at, at that difference.

05:04.795 --> 05:06.995
So there was one study where we controlled the surface

05:07.105 --> 05:08.315
area, the triangles.

05:08.665 --> 05:09.995
What that meant was when you had

05:09.995 --> 05:11.395
one triangle, it was much larger.

05:11.545 --> 05:13.155
When you had nine triangles,

05:13.225 --> 05:15.155
each individual triangle was smaller,

05:15.535 --> 05:18.515
but the total surface area on the screen was the same.

05:19.375 --> 05:21.955
Uh, we also looked at how often it mattered,

05:22.145 --> 05:24.115
whether it mattered how often the stimuli

05:24.115 --> 05:25.675
were repeated, right?

05:25.675 --> 05:27.675
So when you see a digit like three

05:27.675 --> 05:30.355
or four, it looks the same every time you encounter it,

05:30.975 --> 05:32.475
but if you see a group of objects,

05:32.585 --> 05:34.755
they might be arranged differently on each trial.

05:34.965 --> 05:37.515
Three triangles in one trial might look like three tri

05:37.515 --> 05:39.395
different, three triangles on another trial.

05:39.735 --> 05:41.955
So we had another experiment where we looked at, you know,

05:41.955 --> 05:44.075
does it matter if the stim repeated,

05:44.615 --> 05:46.955
so seven triangles always exactly the same

05:47.375 --> 05:48.795
or whether they can be arranged in

05:48.795 --> 05:49.875
different forms in the screen?

05:50.135 --> 05:51.915
So those were the types of manipulations

05:51.915 --> 05:53.515
that varied across the four studies.

05:53.855 --> 05:56.155
But yeah, other than that, they were really, really similar.

05:56.775 --> 05:59.885
Um, I think they had around somewhere between three

05:59.885 --> 06:02.285
and 400 trials, between one

06:02.285 --> 06:03.405
and nine triangles in each one.

06:03.425 --> 06:04.805
And it just said whether they were upright

06:04.805 --> 06:08.045
or inverted, the results are really easy to summarize,

06:08.145 --> 06:10.445
and that we found absolutely nothing.

06:10.865 --> 06:14.085
We found no evidence of a snark effect at all.

06:14.785 --> 06:18.525
So it didn't matter how much area the screen it took up,

06:18.625 --> 06:21.285
it didn't matter how often the stimuli were repeated,

06:21.895 --> 06:23.405
there was no snark effect there.

06:23.635 --> 06:28.245
Okay? So this was, quite a humbling surprise

06:28.245 --> 06:30.685
to us having shown it previously our, in our lab,

06:31.145 --> 06:33.205
but so important as well, right?

06:33.425 --> 06:34.725
So, you know,

06:34.825 --> 06:37.925
and we used, we made sure that we had, you know,

06:38.205 --> 06:39.325
sufficient participant numbers.

06:39.865 --> 06:42.125
Uh, we did what you call a power analysis to check

06:42.125 --> 06:43.645
that we've run enough participants

06:43.745 --> 06:45.165
to find an effective, it's there.

06:45.945 --> 06:48.685
Um, we, we checked our analysis and double checked it,

06:49.065 --> 06:50.165
but, and,

06:50.165 --> 06:53.005
and none of the studies did we find an effective a effect.

06:53.145 --> 06:55.885
So it didn't matter how many triangles people saw,

06:56.055 --> 06:58.205
their right and left hand just did the same thing.

06:58.355 --> 07:00.445
They were completely unaffected by the quantity

07:00.515 --> 07:01.565
that they saw on the screen.

07:01.865 --> 07:03.645
So complete failure to replicate.

07:03.645 --> 07:05.325
There's kind of two aspects of this

07:05.325 --> 07:06.405
that I think is really important.

07:06.985 --> 07:08.005
The first is

07:08.185 --> 07:10.845
how important is trying replicate your own

07:10.925 --> 07:12.005
findings in psychology?

07:12.305 --> 07:15.125
You know, we'd find this really interesting, effect

07:15.135 --> 07:16.885
where we find snark effect for,

07:17.105 --> 07:19.285
for quantities hadn't been shown in adults before.

07:19.705 --> 07:21.085
We were quite excited about it,

07:21.625 --> 07:22.925
but obviously now we've been in

07:22.925 --> 07:24.685
and not replicated for it four times.

07:24.785 --> 07:27.885
So it's just, it's so important that, that, you know, you go

07:27.885 --> 07:29.725
and try and replicate your own findings.

07:29.805 --> 07:31.245
It's, it's just the way science works.

07:31.425 --> 07:33.325
So I think that's, that's one thing about this.

07:34.185 --> 07:36.685
Um, the other thing though, just, you know,

07:36.825 --> 07:39.205
if we assume then that we don't find smart effects

07:39.225 --> 07:40.485
for these types of quantities,

07:41.845 --> 07:43.945
that's very interesting in itself, right?

07:43.945 --> 07:45.305
And it raises a little bit of a puzzle.

07:45.485 --> 07:47.025
You know, we know that in children,

07:47.205 --> 07:50.665
and there's actually even some work in non-human animals,

07:51.045 --> 07:54.905
in birds, I show that birds prefer large quantities

07:54.905 --> 07:56.905
to be, to be on the right and smaller

07:56.905 --> 07:58.105
quantities to be on the left.

07:59.075 --> 08:00.935
So what's going on here? You know, we know that in,

08:00.935 --> 08:02.335
in children, children and,

08:02.335 --> 08:03.935
and even non-human animals, that there seem

08:03.935 --> 08:06.255
to be these preferences as adults.

08:06.505 --> 08:10.495
We're not showing them now, we can't know from the basis

08:10.515 --> 08:12.735
of our findings exactly what's happening there.

08:13.325 --> 08:16.215
It's possibly to do with something that happens

08:16.215 --> 08:19.615
during school when we learn about number, when we start

08:19.615 --> 08:22.455
to use kind of formal number systems learn symbolic number

08:22.455 --> 08:26.535
systems, but also it feeds into this wider debate

08:26.535 --> 08:28.815
around whether we think that symbolic numbers,

08:28.955 --> 08:31.975
so digits spoken number words, written number words,

08:32.355 --> 08:35.735
are processed in the same way as just quantities of objects

08:35.735 --> 08:36.855
and non-symbolic number.

08:37.235 --> 08:38.855
And there's a much wider debate

08:38.855 --> 08:42.015
around whether they have the same underlying processes

08:42.015 --> 08:44.295
and cognition, whether they use the same representations

08:44.675 --> 08:46.415
or whether these are actually two

08:46.415 --> 08:47.855
fundamentally different things.

08:48.355 --> 08:52.095
Now, we can't answer, but certainly based on

08:52.095 --> 08:53.855
what we, it seems,

08:55.865 --> 08:58.335
These kind of non-symbolic quantities,

08:58.805 --> 09:02.335
just encountering them is not enough to trigger access to

09:02.995 --> 09:04.535
the, the magnitude of that quantity

09:04.715 --> 09:06.135
or its spatial association.

09:06.235 --> 09:08.295
So I think we can see that on the basis of our data.

09:09.095 --> 09:10.395
In terms of what we're doing now,

09:10.605 --> 09:12.475
we're looking at whether it matters

09:12.575 --> 09:14.435
how memorable the stimuli are.

09:14.775 --> 09:16.955
So for example, we find that with dice patterns,

09:16.955 --> 09:18.155
we do get snark effects.

09:18.255 --> 09:21.075
So, you know, what is it about our d Do we get snark effects

09:21.095 --> 09:23.275
for dice patterns because they are something

09:23.275 --> 09:25.115
that we've learned, or do we get them

09:25.115 --> 09:26.155
because they are memorable?

09:26.155 --> 09:28.235
They're easy to remember, and that's why we, we,

09:28.295 --> 09:29.755
we associate them with number.

09:30.215 --> 09:32.355
So we're running further studies to kind of look at,

09:32.535 --> 09:34.395
you know, what really matters.

09:34.835 --> 09:37.035
D does, does the representation have to be something

09:37.035 --> 09:39.075
that we know or does it just have to be something that

09:39.655 --> 09:41.955
is easy to remember and and forms a pattern.

Spatial Associations in Numerical Cognition

00:00:00 - Snarks. So a spatial numerical association of response codes. so what it's is, it's linked to the fact that people seem to have a fundamental link between number and space when they, kind of think about the world when they encounter number. So when people perform tasks where they have to reason about, digits or number words, they behave as though they have, well, it's sometimes called a mental number line, which you could almost think of as like a, a, a representation of a ruler in their mind
00:00:34 - of space and larger numbers with the right hand side of space. So kind of the kinda classic demonstration of this is if you ask people to perform a task where they have to respond to a digit on a screen. So for example, they see a digit and they have to press one button of it, that even number and another button. If it's an odd number, what we tend to find is that people are faster to respond to smaller numbers with their left hand, and they're faster to respond to larger numbers with their right hand.
00:01:07 - this fundamental link between number and space and cognition. yeah, as I said, it's called this mental number line that seems to go from the left to the right, where we associate smaller numbers with the left side of space and larger numbers with the right side of space. So with this study, what we were really interested in was whether the form of the representation of number mattered. So there's lots of different ways that you might encounter numerical information in life, right? You might see a digit, you might hear a spoken number word,
00:01:37 - What we were interested in is when you encounter quantities that aren't easily labeled. So in the paper we call these non-symbolic quantities. So this is just a collection of object. Now, in a previous study that we'd published, we'd found some evidence that you get snark effects for those types of quantities. and, and what we'd done was we'd asked people to respond to between one and nine triangles on a screen. And what people had to do was they just had to indicate whether right and left hand,
00:02:08 - or whether they were inverted. And we were interested in whether the quantity of triangles impacted how people perform the task. So in this previous study, we'd found that when you saw a small number of triangles, you were faster with your left hand. When you saw a large number of triangles, you were faster with your right hand. And we thought, this is great. This is really interesting. This suggests that the, you know, the form of that numerical representation, it, it doesn't matter. We still get this snark effect, which is we hadn't really seen in adult participants before.
00:02:40 - and replicate that finding because it's, you know, it's so important in psychology research that we try and replicate our findings because we'd only shown this once. So that was really what this paper was about, trying, finding debate Whether, you know, what we call symbolic representations of quantities. So digit number words, things that are learned and culturally specific, whether those are processed in the same way

Associating Numbers and Spatial Responses in Studies

00:03:12 - and so it kind of, it, it's really feeding into that literature. Do, do we, do we process them in the same way? Now, the interesting thing is that in, in young children, we do find that young children associate, non-symbolic number with these kind of, kind of spatial aspects. So children, prefer right sided responses for large groups of objects and left sided responses for smaller groups of objects. It hadn't really been shown in adults though. So what wasn't entirely clear was whether
00:03:44 - in young children, or whether there's something that's more to do with learning about how numbers work and school. And there's some evidence that says that it could be, you know, something to do with our education, because we know that in languages that are written from right to left, the snark effect tends to reverse. Okay? So we're kind of trying to get, you know, what's actually going on in adult participants. Do they, do they behave the same way as, as children do with these types of quantities? The four experiments were, were really, really similar.
00:04:15 - what people did was they saw these, triangles. They were either upright or inverted. There were between one and nine triangles in each trial, and they just had a, you know, a left sided response and a right sided response. So upright, inverted, and this was swapped around for the participants. The differences between the studies were really to do with quite, low level aspects of the stimuli. So, for example, if I have a triangle, if I have one triangle and then I have nine triangles, just because you, you know, if the triangles are the same size,
00:04:49 - of the screen than the one triangle, right? And what we want to know, what we're interested in is really whether it's the number that's important rather than just kind of visual properties of the stimuli. So, for it, so, so two of the studies were really trying to get at, at that difference. So there was one study where we controlled the surface area, the triangles. What that meant was when you had one triangle, it was much larger. When you had nine triangles, each individual triangle was smaller, but the total surface area on the screen was the same.
00:05:22 - whether it mattered how often the stimuli were repeated, right? So when you see a digit like three or four, it looks the same every time you encounter it, but if you see a group of objects, they might be arranged differently on each trial. Three triangles in one trial might look like three tri different, three triangles on another trial. So we had another experiment where we looked at, you know, does it matter if the stim repeated, so seven triangles always exactly the same or whether they can be arranged in different forms in the screen?
00:05:51 - that varied across the four studies. But yeah, other than that, they were really, really similar. I think they had around somewhere between three and 400 trials, between one and nine triangles in each one. And it just said whether they were upright or inverted, the results are really easy to summarize, and that we found absolutely nothing. We found no evidence of a snark effect at all. So it didn't matter how much area the screen it took up, it didn't matter how often the stimuli were repeated,

Investigating Number Representation and Spatial Associations

00:06:23 - Okay? So this was, quite a humbling surprise to us having shown it previously our, in our lab, but so important as well, right? So, you know, and we used, we made sure that we had, you know, sufficient participant numbers. we did what you call a power analysis to check that we've run enough participants to find an effective, it's there. we, we checked our analysis and double checked it, but, and, and none of the studies did we find an effective a effect.
00:06:56 - their right and left hand just did the same thing. They were completely unaffected by the quantity that they saw on the screen. So complete failure to replicate. There's kind of two aspects of this that I think is really important. The first is how important is trying replicate your own findings in psychology? You know, we'd find this really interesting, effect where we find snark effect for, for quantities hadn't been shown in adults before. We were quite excited about it, but obviously now we've been in and not replicated for it four times.
00:07:27 - and try and replicate your own findings. It's, it's just the way science works. So I think that's, that's one thing about this. the other thing though, just, you know, if we assume then that we don't find smart effects for these types of quantities, that's very interesting in itself, right? And it raises a little bit of a puzzle. You know, we know that in children, and there's actually even some work in non-human animals, in birds, I show that birds prefer large quantities
00:07:56 - quantities to be on the left. So what's going on here? You know, we know that in, in children, children and, and even non-human animals, that there seem to be these preferences as adults. We're not showing them now, we can't know from the basis of our findings exactly what's happening there. It's possibly to do with something that happens during school when we learn about number, when we start to use kind of formal number systems learn symbolic number systems, but also it feeds into this wider debate
00:08:28 - so digits spoken number words, written number words, are processed in the same way as just quantities of objects and non-symbolic number. And there's a much wider debate around whether they have the same underlying processes and cognition, whether they use the same representations or whether these are actually two fundamentally different things. Now, we can't answer, but certainly based on what we, it seems, These kind of non-symbolic quantities,
00:09:02 - the, the magnitude of that quantity or its spatial association. So I think we can see that on the basis of our data. In terms of what we're doing now, we're looking at whether it matters how memorable the stimuli are. So for example, we find that with dice patterns, we do get snark effects. So, you know, what is it about our d Do we get snark effects for dice patterns because they are something that we've learned, or do we get them because they are memorable? They're easy to remember, and that's why we, we, we associate them with number.

Importance of Representation vs. Memorability in Numbers

00:09:39 - you know, what really matters. D does, does the representation have to be something that we know or does it just have to be something that is easy to remember and and forms a pattern.

Faculti AI can make mistakes

Research

Policy

Analysis