Preschoolers' Associations Between Space and Numbers Can Be Biased by Surface Area

Abstract

People associate numbers and horizontal space. This association has been demonstrated by the so‐called SNARC (Spatial‐Numerical Association of Response Codes)‐effect, with Western participants responding faster to larger numbers with their right hand and vice versa for smaller numbers. SNARC‐like effects have also been reported for preschoolers. However, it remains unclear whether children's SNARC‐effects are exclusively based on number or whether nonnumerical factors such as surface area can also play a role. To address this question, we asked children to compare quantities in a nonsymbolic number comparison task. On half of the trials, the larger set took up more total surface area (congruent trials), and on the other half, the smaller number had more surface area (incongruent trials). We obtained a significant interaction of SNARC‐like effects and congruency. SNARC‐effects were only observed for congruent trials, demonstrating that preschoolers' spatial‐numerical associations can be affected by nonnumerical magnitude.

Literacy overrides effects of animacy: A picture-naming study with pre-literate German children and adult speakers of German and Arabic

“…This was true although all of the children in our sample were regularly exposed to joined book reading activities at their homes, and although half of the children had some very rudimentary experience with writing. While previous research has shown that such activities sometimes suffice to introduce spatial biases in preschool children-especially with regard to the so-called 'mental number line' in which smaller numbers are associated with the left and larger numbers with the right side of space [65][66][67][68], others find that directional biases are not yet present at a preschool age [32,43]. In line with these latter findings, our results suggest that some basic exposure to reading is not sufficient but rather that more substantial experience with reading and writing is necessary for introducing spatial biases during picture naming.…”