Spatial-Numerical Associations Enhance the Short-Term Memorization of Digit Locations

Abstract

Little is known about how spatial-numerical associations (SNAs) affect the way individuals process their environment, especially in terms of learning and memory. In this study, we investigated the potential effects of SNAs in a digit memory task in order to determine whether spatially organized mental representations of numbers can influence the short-term encoding of digits positioned on an external display. To this aim, we designed a memory game in which participants had to match pairs of identical digits in a 9 × 2 matrix of cards. The nine cards of the first row had to be turned face up and then face down, one by one, to reveal a digit from 1 to 9. When a card was turned face up in the second row, the position of the matching digit in the first row had to be recalled. Our results showed that performance was better when small numbers were placed on the left side of the row and large numbers on the right side (i.e., congruent) as compared to the inverse (i.e., incongruent) or a random configuration. Our findings suggests that SNAs can enhance the memorization of digit positions and therefore that spatial mental representations of numbers can play an important role on the way humans process and encode the information around them. To our knowledge, this study is the first that reaches this conclusion in a context where digits did not have to be processed as numerical values.

Priming effects of arithmetic signs in 10‐ to 15‐year‐old children

“…More concretely, to solve a problem such as 4 + 3, individuals could place a mental counter on the quantity 4 and operate 3 quick moves on the right of the line in order to reach the answer 7 (see Figure 1). The existence of such an oriented mental line, on which quantities are represented by children and adults, is widely recognized (e.g., Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993; Hoffman, Hornung, Martin, & Shiltz, 2013; Shaki, Fischer, & Petrusic, 2009; Thevenot, Dewi, Banta Lavenex, & Bagnoud, 2018; Thevenot, Fayol, & Barrouillet, 2018). Mathieu, Gourjon, Couderc, Thevenot, and Prado (2016) experimentally tested Fayol and Thevenot’s hypothesis and, accordingly, showed that addition problems are solved faster when the second operands of the problems are positioned on the right side of a computer screen rather than when it is on the left side.…”