Finger posing primes number comprehension
- Canonical finger postures, as used in counting, activate number knowledge, but the exact mechanism for this priming effect is unclear. Here we dissociated effects of visual versus motor priming of number concepts. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed either to pictures of canonical finger postures (visual priming) or actively produced the same finger postures (motor priming) and then used foot responses to rapidly classify auditory numbers (targets) as smaller or larger than 5. Classification times revealed that manually adopted but not visually perceived postures primed magnitude classifications. Experiment 2 obtained motor priming of number processing through finger postures also with vocal responses. Priming only occurred through canonical and not through non-canonical finger postures. Together, these results provide clear evidence for motor priming of number knowledge. Relative contributions of vision and action for embodied numerical cognition and the importance of canonicity of postures are discussed.
Author details: | Elena SixtusORCiDGND, Martin H. FischerORCiDGND, Oliver LindemannORCiD |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-017-0804-y |
ISSN: | 1612-4782 |
ISSN: | 1612-4790 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28374126 |
Title of parent work (English): | Cognitive processing : international quarterly of cognitive science |
Publisher: | Springer |
Place of publishing: | Heidelberg |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2017 |
Publication year: | 2017 |
Release date: | 2020/04/20 |
Tag: | Embodied cognition; Finger counting; Numerical cognition; Priming |
Volume: | 18 |
Number of pages: | 12 |
First page: | 237 |
Last Page: | 248 |
Funding institution: | DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) [Fi-1915/2-1] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Sport- und Gesundheitswissenschaften |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Sportmedizin und Prävention |