Isolating the effects of symbolic distance, and semantic congruity in comparative judgments: An additive-factors analysis

Abstract

The time needed to compare two symbols increases as the cognitive distance between them on the relevant dimension increases (symbolic distance effect). Furthermore, when subjects are told to choose either the larger or the smaller of two stimuli, the response time is shorter if the instruction is congruent with the overall size of the stimuli (semantic congruity effect). Three experiments were conducted to determine the locus of these effects in terms of a sequence of processing stages. The developmental aspects of these effects were also evaluated, as the subjects were from kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, and college. By varying the visual quality of the stimulus in each experiment, it was determined that the distance effect resides in a comparison stage, whereas the congruity effect is an encoding phenomenon. Both distance and congruity effects were present at all grade levels, but they decreased in magnitude as grade increased. The results were interpreted relative to recent models of comparative judgments.When a subject is presented with two digits and asked to compare them, the speed and accuracy of the comparison is determined, in part, by the numerical difference between the digits (symbolic distance effect) and the relationship between the experimenter's instructions and the size of the digits (semantic congruity effect). The symbolic distance effect was first demonstrated by Moyer and Landauer (1967). They asked subjects to indicate which of two digits was larger and found that the time needed to respond was an inverse function of the difference between the numbers. This effect has been replicated consistently with adults (e.g., Banks,

One, two, three, four, nothing more: An investigation of the conceptual sources of the verbal counting principles

“…For example, when adults produce verbal estimates of the sizes of sets without counting, their estimates show the other signature of analog magnitudes, namely scalar variability (Izard & Dehaene, under review;Whalen et al, 1999; see also Cordes et al, 2001, for evidence of scalar variability in numeral comprehension). Much of this mapping is already in place in the preschool years (Duncan & McFarland, 1980;HuntleyFenner, 2001;Lipton & Spelke, 2005;Sekuler & Mierkiewicz, 1977;Temple & Posner, 1998). For example, as long as they can count to "one hundred", five-year olds can estimate the cardinal values of sets of up to one hundred objects without counting (Lipton & Spelke, 2005), suggesting that they have mapped most of the numerals in their count list to analog magnitudes.…”

Bilateral field interactions and hemispheric asymmetry in number comparison

“…In a number comparison task, reaction times decreased systematically when the distance between two numbers increased (see also [35,41]). It was easier to decide that 8 was larger than 2, than that 8 was larger than 7.…”

Storage and retrieval of addition facts: The role of number comparison

“…1 There is evidence that cardinal magnitude information is automatically activated even when it is irrelevant to the task. Physical identity between numerals (Duncan & McFarland, 1980), physical size comparisons (Foltz, Poltrock, & Potts, 1984), and parity judgements (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993), all show the effects of the cardinal magnitude of the stimulus numbers. This suggests that cardinal magnitude will be activated automatically.…”