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Number comparison tasks produce a distance effect e.g., Moyer & Landauer (Nature 215: 1519-1520, 1967). It has been suggested that this effect supports the existence of semantic mental representations of numbers. In a matching task, a distance effect also appears, which suggests that the effect has an automatic semantic component. Recently, Cohen (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16: 332-336, 2009) suggested that in both automatic and intentional tasks, the distance effect might reflect not a semantic number representation, but a physical similarity between digits. The present article (1) compares the distance effect in the automatic matching task with that in the intentional number comparison task and suggests that, in the latter, the distance effect does include an additional semantic component; and (2) indicates that the distance effect in the standard automatic matching task is questionable and that its appearance in previous matching tasks was based on the specific analysis and design that were applied.

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In the study of basic and high-level cognitive functions, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers have tended to focus on normal psychological processes and on deficits in these processes, whereas the study of exceptional abilities has been largely neglected. Here the authors emphasize the value of researching exceptional abilities. They make the case that studies of exceptional representations, such as of time, number, and space in synesthesia, can provide us with insights regarding the nature of the neurocognitive mechanisms of these dimensions, as well as their developmental, evolutionary, and cultural origins.

Number-space synesthetes visualize numbers in specific spatial configurations. Their spatial-numerical perceptions are assumed to be automatic in nature and have been found to affect performance in various numerical tasks. The current study tested whether synesthetic number-space associations can modulate the well-established Size Congruency Effect (SiCE), which is considered to be an indication for the automaticity of numerical processing. Two groups, number-space synesthetes and matched controls, were tested on a numerical Stroop task (Henik and Tzelgov, 1982). In separate blocks, participants were presented with two digits and asked to make comparative judgments regarding either numerical values (numerical comparison) or physical size (physical comparison). Both dimensions were manipulated orthogonally, creating three congruency levels: congruent (e.g., 2 7), incongruent (e.g., 2 7) and neutral (e.g., 2 2 and 2 7 for physical and numerical blocks, respectively). For the numerical block, both synesthetes and controls showed the classic SiCE, indicating similar automatic processing of physical magnitude. However, in the physical block, synesthetes showed a lack of automatic numerical magnitude processing when the numbers to be compared were presented incompatibly with their relative position on the synesthetic number-form. This finding strongly suggests that synesthetes’ number-space perceptions affect their ability to automatically process the semantic meaning of numerals. The involvement of space in automatic magnitude processing for number-space synesthetes and non-synesthetes is discussed.