Grammatical number elicits SNARC and MARC effects as a function of task demands

Abstract

Despite the robustness of the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) and linguistic markedness of response codes (MARC) effect, the mechanisms that underlie these effects are still under debate. In this paper, we investigate the extraction of quantity information from German number words and nouns inflected for singular and plural using two alternative forced choice paradigms. These paradigms are applied to different tasks to investigate how access to quantity representation is modulated by task demands. In Experiment 1, we replicated previous SNARC findings for number words-that is, a relative left-hand advantage for words denoting small numbers and a right-hand advantage for words denoting large numbers in semantic tasks (parity decision and quantity comparison). No SNARC effect was obtained for surface or lexical processing tasks (font categorization and lexical decision). In Experiment 2, we found that German words inflected for singular had a relative left-hand advantage, and German words inflected for plural a relative right-hand advantage, showing a SNARC-like effect for grammatical number. The effect interfered, however, with a MARC-like effect based on the markedness asymmetry of singulars and plurals. These two effects appear to be dissociated by response latency rather than task demands, with MARC being more pronounced in early responses and SNARC being more pronounced in late responses. The present findings shed light on the relationship of conceptual number and grammatical number and constrain current accounts of the SNARC and MARC effects.

Random word generation reveals spatial encoding of syllabic word length

“…Furthermore, our findings suggest important potential insights with regard to the effects reported in Roettger and Domahs () and Loetscher et al . ().…”

“…At first glance, this result seems to be at odds with our own findings whereby syllabic length, but not singular/plural marking of words, was affected by lateral attention. However, not only were there differences in task – word generation in the present studies vs. word comprehension in Roettger and Domahs () – but more importantly, there might be a potential confound in the German word stimuli used by Roettger and Domahs (): Note that the majority of German nouns have an additional syllable in their plural compared to their singular form (e.g., Mann [man] – Männ er [men]; Frau [woman] – Frau en [women]; Kind [child] – Kind er [children]); given that at least two of the nouns (out of a total of only four) in the Roettger and Domahs () study were affected by this confound, it could well be that their findings were driven by syllabic length rather than number marking (or associated semantic cardinality), which would actually be in line with our own data. One might even speculate whether the present SNARC‐like effect on syllabic length could partially explain previous findings on random number generation (Loetscher et al ., ) – after all, higher numbers (e.g., twenty‐two) tend to have syllabically longer names than lower numbers (e.g., three).…”

“…Second, while this is not the first time that words were shown to exhibit SNARC‐like effects, only few studies addressed the issue of the relative magnitude encoded in the word's surface form (Di Bono & Zorzi, ; Roettger & Domahs, ). The results of Roettger and Domahs are similar to the ones reported here in that they show facilitation of lateral responses as a function of singular/plural noun forms.…”

“…Also, a study by Seno, Taya, Ito, and Sunaga (2011) showed that participants' number choices can be biased by previously established temporal (future vs. past) primes. Furthermore, Di Bono and Zorzi (2013) showed that, when asked to randomly generate letters, people generate letters that appear earlier in the alphabet on left head turns while a study by Roettger and Domahs (2015) showed that, under certain conditions, the opposite is truepresentation of German singular-marked nouns facilitates subsequent left-hand responses, while plural-marked nouns facilitate subsequent right-hand responses. Finally, a study by Lachmair et al (2016) demonstrated that the accuracy of word recall can be influenced by the body's orientation in space.…”

Do non‐verbal number systems shape grammar? Numerical cognition and Number morphology compared

“…An association between numbers and space also occurs in pre‐verbal human infants (de Hevia & Spelke, ) and animals (Rugani & de Hevia, ; Rugani, Vallortigara, Priftis & Regolin, ; Rugani, Vallortigara & Regolin, ). A study by Roettger and Domahs () reports a SNARC‐like effect in a series of speeded behavioural response tasks using German words that varied in morphological Number. The authors found that words inflected in the singular had a relative left‐hand advantage and words in the plural a relative right‐hand advantage, suggesting that morphological Number impacts selectively on quantity processing.…”