2013 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Numerical Magnitude and Its Dynamics
| Project/Area Number |
13J04112
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| Research Institution | Kobe University |
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Principal Investigator |
KIRJAKOVSKI ATANAS 神戸大学, 国際文化学研究科, 特別研究員(DC2)
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| Keywords | cardinal numerals / nominal numerals / context / priming / numerical distance effect / number comparison / semantic blocking / quantity |
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| Research Abstract |
Arabic numerals depending on their contextual use can be divided into three main categories : cardinal (e.g., prices), ordinal (e.g., ranking lists), and nominal (e.g., postal codes). Cardinal and ordinal contexts imply quantitative information, whereas nominal numerals are used in contexts in which their quantity is irrelevant and mostly label things. During the course of last year, three studies were performed in order to understand the nature of Arabic numerals used in nominal context. In the first two studies a priming paradigm was employed, where prices and postal codes were presented immediately before participants compared single digit to a standard (e.g., "smaller or larger than 5") or as in the second study, compared two simultaneously presented digits (e.g., if 2 8 were displayed, participants decided which one is larger). Numerical distance effect (the closer two numbers are to each other, the longer it takes to decide which one is larger) was taken as a cognitive measure. T
… More
he important outcome from both studies was that numerical context modulated the processing times of Arabic numerals and evidence for difference between cardinal and nominal numerals was provided. The findings from the two studies were supported in a third study that required participants to name digits aloud. Like in the previous studies, cardinal context showed advantage over nominal one, suggesting that quantitative information contained in cardinal numerals facilitates numerical processing. In summary, the three studies showed that nominal numerals are differently processed from cardinal ones under quantity-relevant and irrelevant tasks. The outcome of the studies is significant since it provides first-hand experimental evidence for a contextual modulation of Arabic numerals. Different reviewers judged the current approach as highly original, and conclusively, it opens an important direction in numerical cognition by clarifying the contextual influence on numbers and by proposing methods to measure it. Less
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The purpose to understand the dynamics of numerical magnitude in the nominal context has been achieved. Main challenge was to overcome the lack of previous studies on the same issue and probably the largest contribution of the work described in Section 9 「研究実績の概要」is the development of methodology to measure the differences between numerical contexts. Also, the topic is original and up-to-date with the current developments in the field of numerical cognition.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The strongest evidence for effects in psychology comes when researchers confirm the results obtained in the behavioral studies with an electrophysiological data of the brain recorded when participants perform similar behavioral tasks. Therefore, future plans involve application of scalp-recorded event-related potentials technique (ERPs) to measure whether there are differences in electrophysiological correlates between cardinal and nominal numerical contexts.
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