Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

The Source of the Symbolic Numerical Distance and Size Effects

Version 1 : Received: 6 September 2016 / Approved: 7 September 2016 / Online: 7 September 2016 (11:29:41 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Abstract

Human number understanding is thought to rely on the analogue number system (ANS), working according to Weber’s law. We propose an alternative account, suggesting that symbolic mathematical knowledge is based on a discrete semantic system (DSS), a representation that stores values in a semantic network, similar to the mental lexicon or to a conceptual network. Here, focusing on the phenomena of numerical distance and size effects in comparison tasks, first we discuss how a DSS model could explain these numerical effects. Second, we demonstrate that DSS model can give quantitatively as appropriate a description of the effects as the ANS model. Finally, we show that symbolic numerical size effect is mainly influenced by the frequency of the symbols, and not by the ratios of their values. This last result suggests that numerical distance and size effects cannot be caused by the ANS, while the DSS model might be the alternative approach that can explain the frequency-based size effect.

Keywords

numerical cognition; numerical distance effect; numerical size effect; analogue number system; discrete semantic system

Subject

Social Sciences, Cognitive Science

Comments (2)

Comment 1
Received: 13 September 2016
Commenter: (Click to see Publons profile: )
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: See further details about this project on our webpage.
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Response 1 to Comment 1
Received: 15 July 2020
Commenter: (Click to see Publons profile: )
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Updated web page address is www.thenumberworks.org/discrete_semantic_system.html

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