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When participants judge the parity of visually presented digits, left-hand responses are faster for numerically small numbers, whereas right-hand responses are faster for large numbers [SNARC effect; S. Dehaene, S. Bossini, P. Giraux, The mental representation of parity and number magnitude. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen., 122, (1993) 371-396]. The present study aimed to find more direct evidence for the functional locus of this effect by recording brain waves while participants performed speeded parity judgments giving manual responses. Our results show clear and robust SNARC effects in the response-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) compared to the stimulus-locked ERPs, confirming that the SNARC effect arises during response-related rather than stimulus-related processing stages. Further analyses of lateralized readiness potentials strongly suggest that the SNARC effect begins to emerge in a response-related stage prior to response preparation and execution, more specifically, in a response selection stage. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved
Bimanual parity judgments of numerically small (large) digits are faster with the left (right) hand (the SNARC effect; Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). According to one explanation, this effect is culturally derived and reflects ontogenetic influences such as the direction of written language; it might therefore be limited to, or at least be larger with, pairs of lateralized effectors which are instrumental to the production and comprehension of written language. We report two experiments which test for SNARC effects with pedal responses, and compare these effects to manual results. Pedal responses yielded highly systematic SNARC effects; furthermore, these effects did not differ from manual SNARC effects, These results argue against accounts in which the SNARC effect is specific for effectors that are habitually associated with the production or comprehension of written language