Dollman Justin, Levine William H
a Department of Psychological Science , University of Arkansas , Fayetteville , AR , USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2016;69(3):403-9. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1101146. Epub 2015 Dec 11.
Numerical judgments are facilitated for left-space responses to a smaller number and right-space responses to a larger number (the spatial-numerical association of response codes, SNARC, effect). Despite support for a mental number line (i.e., spatial) explanation of the SNARC effect, this account has been challenged by an intermediate-coding theory that makes use of a polarity-correspondence principle. The latter is a general explanatory framework whereby stimulus and response dimensions are represented in a categorical, binary manner, with complementary categories coded as having either positive or negative polarity. When stimulus and response polarity match, responding is facilitated. In the present experiment we pitted explicitly presented close-far coding against an implicit mental number line (i.e., left-right coding). Subjects categorized numbers (1, 4, 6, and 9) as greater or less than a standard (5) using keys defined only as close to and far from a starting key. We found that, despite instructing subjects to use a close-far coding scheme, they exhibited a typical SNARC effect, with small-number responses facilitated on the left and large-number responses on the right. These results are discussed in the context of results supporting the polarity explanation and with respect to representational pluralism.
对于较小数字的左空间反应和较大数字的右空间反应，数字判断更容易（即反应编码的空间数字关联，SNARC效应）。尽管有证据支持对SNARC效应的心理数字线（即空间）解释，但这一解释受到了一种利用极性对应原则的中间编码理论的挑战。后者是一个通用的解释框架，其中刺激和反应维度以分类的、二元的方式表示，互补类别被编码为具有正或负极性。当刺激和反应极性匹配时，反应更容易。在本实验中，我们将明确呈现的近-远编码与隐式心理数字线（即左-右编码）进行了对比。受试者使用仅定义为靠近和远离起始键的按键，将数字（1、4、6和9）分类为大于或小于标准值（5）。我们发现，尽管指示受试者使用近-远编码方案，但他们仍表现出典型的SNARC效应，左侧更容易出现小数字反应，右侧更容易出现大数字反应。这些结果将在支持极性解释的结果背景下以及关于表征多元论的方面进行讨论。
