Understanding economical outcomes with the mental number line

Abstract

With this study we provide evidence that the cognitive processes involved in addition/subtraction, mapped along the mental number line, seem to mediate our understanding of trading verbs.When left-to-right culture participants read "loss" verbs, cognitive activation moves "leftward" as in arithmetical subtraction, while reading "gain" verbs activates a mental rightward space as in addition.We test this hypothesis by asking to a group of participants to use their left and right hand in judging (as correct of not) the syntactic form of several verbs meaning financial outcomes. Results show that processing "gain verbs" was associated with shorter latencies when responding with the right hand similarly when performing an addition task, while processing "loss verbs" was associated with shorter latencies when responding with the left, similarly when performing a subtraction task.