An Input Lexicon for Familiar Numbers

dates; encyclopedic facts; reading Arabic numbers; transcoding; word superiority effect; Numerical Analysis; Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; Applied Mathematics

Abstract :

[en] Neuropsychological case-studies suggested that dates and encyclopedic numbers may be processed differently than unknown numbers. However, this issue was seldom investigated in healthy participants. Therefore, it is unclear whether known dates are read like words (as lexical items), or like numbers (each position strictly defines digits’ values in a base-10 system). Here, we compared dates to unknown numbers in an experiment using a paradigm from the word recognition literature. We assessed the word-superiority effect by testing experts (students/ teachers in History) with dates. A 4-characters stimulus (xxxx; letters or numbers, half known/unknown) was presented centrally, masked, and followed by 2 characters above and below the mask, at position 2 (xXxx) or 3 (xxXx) in an alternative-forced-choice recognition task. Both accuracy and reaction times were better for dates than unknown numbers, similarly to the results obtained with words by comparison to non-words. However, this effect was modulated by position in the string. These results show a “date-superiority effect” revealing that dates are processed differently than unknown numbers, and suggest that similar orthographical mechanisms might be used to process dates and words.

Disciplines :

Neurosciences & behavior

Author, co-author :

LOCHY, Aliette ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS) > Cognitive Science and Assessment ; Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

SCHILTZ, Christine ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS) > Cognitive Science and Assessment

External co-authors :

Language :

English

Title :

An Input Lexicon for Familiar Numbers

Publication date :

July 2022

Journal title :

Journal of Numerical Cognition

eISSN :

2363-8761

Publisher :

PsychOpen

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

244 - 258

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://jnc.psychopen.eu/index.php/jnc/article/download/7385/7385.pdf

Funding text :

The first author was supported at the time of data collection by the Face perception INTER project (INTER/FNRS/15/11015111) funded by the Luxembourgish Fund for Scientific Research (FNR, Luxembourg) and by the Belgian Funds for Scientific Research (FNRS; Grant nr: PDR T.0207.16 FNRS).

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since 20 November 2023

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