Commentary: A mental number line in human newborns

Felisatti, Arianna; Laubrock, Jochen; Shaki, Samuel; Fischer, Martin H.

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2020.00099

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Importantly, it is known that arbitrary bindings that would be required for the OPE are enabled only from the beginning of the third year of life in these external spatial systems 29 . Overall, rather than relating to the flexible use of spontaneous spatial coding for serial order ability in WM, we believe that the above findings with 7‐month‐old infants are a reflection of left‐to‐right biases that are evoked by biological factors, such as brain lateralization in the control of spatial attention 30,31 . Whereas the left‐to‐right oriented spatial coding of serial order observed in some children of the current study could potentially be explained by the lateralization in the brain's attentional systems, the latter could not explain the right‐to‐left oriented coding observed here in a different subset of children.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Do preliterate children spontaneously employ spatial coding for serial order in working memory?

Dijck

Abrahamse

Fias

2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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The ability to memorize arbitrary sequences contributes to cognitive faculties like language and mathematics. Research suggests that in literate adults, serial order in verbal working memory (WM) is grounded in spatial attention and is mentally organized according to our reading habits, that is, from left-to-right in Western cultures. Currently, it is unknown whether spatialization is a consequence of literacy, or whether the ability already exists early in life but is shaped by literacy in "calibrating" the initial individual differences in the orientation of spatial coding. Here, we investigated the spatial coding of serial order in WM in 5-year-old children who did not yet enter formal literacy education. At the group level, no systematic spatial coding was observed. To investigate whether this absence was due to subjects with reliable but opposing effects, we determined the prevalence of spatial coding at the individual level. This analysis revealed that 36% of the children systematically associated serial order to space, with approximately half of them coding from left-to-right and the rest from right-to-left. These results indicate that a subgroup of preliterate children associate serial order with space and suggest that reading and writing experience calibrates the orientation of spatial coding with reading habits.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Do preliterate children spontaneously employ spatial coding for serial order in working memory?

Dijck

Abrahamse

Fias

2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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“…Specifically, we may have tapped into a pre-conceptual mapping between magnitudes and space that also exists in human newborns (de Hevia et al, 2017 ; Di Giorgio, Di Giorgio et al, 2019 ) and some animals (Rugani et al, 2015 ). We believe that this evolutionarily inherited association reflects neuronal tuning of the brain hemispheres (Felisatti, Laubrock, Shaki, & Fischer 2020a , b ) that is subsequently modulated by culturally acquired directional habits, such as reading or finger counting (Shaki & Fischer, 2018b ). An interesting observation is that right-to-left counters seem to have weaker SNAs—a finding reminiscent of the modulatory effect of finger counting on SNARC in adults (Fischer, 2008 ) and awaiting further investigation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This spatial–numerical association (SNA) has been extensively documented in speeded number classification tasks with lateralized button responses, now widely known as SNARC effect (for spatial – numerical association of respon se codes ; Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993 ; for reviews, see Fischer & Shaki, 2014 ; Knops, 2020 ): Responses are faster and more accurate for small numbers with left-side responses and for larger numbers with right-side responses. Recently, SNAs were also documented in newborn humans (de Hevia, Veggiotti, Streri, & Bonn, 2017 ; Di Giorgio, Lunghi, Rugani, Regolin, Dalla Barba, Vallortigara, & Simion, 2019 ) and chicks (Rugani, Vallortigara, Priftis, & Regolin, 2015 ) with the use of non-symbolic visual quantities, pointing to a fundamental and pre-conceptual link (Felisatti, Laubrock, Shaki, & Fischer, 2020a , 2020b ). Whether such behavioral effects on speed and accuracy also lead to biased quantity appreciations is unknown and requires contrasts against veridical performance, as we will show below.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic spatial distortion of quantitative estimates

Shaki

Fischer

2020

Psychological Research

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Magnitude estimation has been studied since the beginnings of scientific psychology and constitutes a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Yet, it has apparently never been noticed that estimates depend on the spatial arrangement used. We tested 167 adults in three experiments to show that the spatial layout of stimuli and responses systematically distorts number estimation, length production, and weight reproduction performance. The direction of distortion depends on the observer's counting habits, but does not seem to reflect the use of spatially associated number concepts. Our results imply that all quantitative estimates are contaminated by a "spell of space" whenever stimuli or responses are spatially distributed.

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“…So far, all biological explanations of SNAs ground on the association of numerosity with space. Here, we present a novel proposal that focuses on the association between nonnumerical visual‐spatial frequency (SF) and space 32 . As we will later show, the spatial frequency features contained in any visual stimulus, including sets of dots, can serve as non‐numerical foundation for nonsymbolic SNAs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A biological foundation for spatial–numerical associations: the brain's asymmetric frequency tuning

Felisatti

Laubrock

Shaki

et al. 2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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Left" and "right" coordinates control our spatial behavior and even influence abstract thoughts. For number concepts, horizontal spatial-numerical associations (SNAs) have been widely documented: we associate few with left and many with right. Importantly, increments are universally coded on the right side even in preverbal humans and nonhuman animals, thus questioning the fundamental role of directional cultural habits, such as reading or finger counting. Here, we propose a biological, nonnumerical mechanism for the origin of SNAs on the basis of asymmetric tuning of animal brains for different spatial frequencies (SFs). The resulting selective visual processing predicts both universal SNAs and their context-dependence. We support our proposal by analyzing the stimuli used to document SNAs in newborns for their SF content. As predicted, the SFs contained in visual patterns with few versus many elements preferentially engage right versus left brain hemispheres, respectively, thus predicting left-versus rightward behavioral biases. Our "brain's asymmetric frequency tuning" hypothesis explains the perceptual origin of horizontal SNAs for nonsymbolic visual numerosities and might be extensible to the auditory domain.

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Commentary: A mental number line in human newborns

Cited by 9 publications

References 36 publications

Do preliterate children spontaneously employ spatial coding for serial order in working memory?

Do preliterate children spontaneously employ spatial coding for serial order in working memory?

Systematic spatial distortion of quantitative estimates

A biological foundation for spatial–numerical associations: the brain's asymmetric frequency tuning

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