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On the Perceptual Generality of the Unit-Decade Compatibility Effect

2004; Hogrefe Verlag; Volume: 51; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1027/1617-3169.51.1.72

2190-5142

Hans‐Christoph Nuerk, Ulrich Weger, Klaus Willmes,

Visual perception and processing mechanisms

Research ArticlesOn the Perceptual Generality of the Unit-Decade Compatibility EffectHans-Christoph Nuerk, Ulrich Weger, and Klaus WillmesHans-Christoph Nuerk University Hospital of the RWTH Aachen, Neuropsychology Section, Department of Neurology, Germany Search for more papers by this author, Ulrich Weger State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Psychology, NY, USA Search for more papers by this author, and Klaus Willmes University Hospital of the RWTH Aachen, Neuropsychology Section, Department of Neurology, Germany Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:September 01, 2006https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169.51.1.72PDFView Full Text ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInReddit SectionsMoreAbstractAbstract. Number magnitude is assumed to be holistically represented along a single mental number line. Recently, we have observed a unit-decade-compatibility effect which is inconsistent with that assumption (Nuerk, Weger, & Willmes, 2001). In two-digit Arabic number comparison, we have demonstrated that compatible comparisons in which separate decade and unit comparisons lead to the same decision (32_47, 3 < 4 and 2 < 7) were faster than incompatible trials (37_52, 3 < 5, but 7 > 2). Because overall distance was matched, a holistic model could not account for the compatibility effect. However, one could argue that the compatibility effect was due to the specific vertical perceptual arrangement of the two-digit numbers in Nuerk et al.’s (2001) experiment where the decade digits and unit digits were presented column-wise above each other. To examine this objection, we studied the perceptual generality of the compatibility effect with diagonal presentation. We replicated the compatibility effect with diagonal presentation. 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We would like to thank Stefanie Lemmer and Guillerme Wood for their precious help in the preparation of this article.PDF download