Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Number magnitude potentiates action judgements

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Experimental Brain Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Motor actions can be simulated and generated through the perception of objects and their characteristics. Such functional characteristics of objects with given action capabilities are called affordances. Here we report an interaction between the perception of affordances and the processing of numerical magnitude, and we show that the numerical information calibrates the judgement of action even when no actual action is required. In Experiment 1, participants had to judge whether they would be able to grasp a rod lengthways between their thumb and index finger. The presentation of the rod was preceded by a number or a non-numerical symbol. When a small number preceded the rod, participants overestimated their grasp; conversely, when a large number preceded the rods, they underestimated their grasp. In Experiment 2, participants were requested to judge if two successive rods had the same length, a judgement that did not involve any grasping. The numerical primes had no effect on this judgement, showing that the magnitude/affordance interaction was not due to a simple perceptual effect. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that the interaction was not present with a non-numerical ordered sequence, thereby eliminating sequence order as a potentially confounding variable.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Digits 2 and 8 were used as exemplars of small and large digits to avoid any serial position effects that might have appeared with 1 and 9 due to their being the extremities of the single-digit series.

  2. The 18 rods from Experiment 1 from which the 13 cm reference rod and the 17.5 cm rod were excluded.

  3. The distance effect refers to the fact that the time required to compare two digits is an inverse function of the numerical difference between them (Moyer and Landauer 1967). The magnitude effect indicates that, holding size difference roughly constant, the reaction time to compare two digits increases monotonically as the absolute size of the digits presented increases (Moyer and Landauer 1967). The spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect refers to the fact that small numbers are preferentially responded to with the left-hand key, whereas the reverse is true for large numbers (Dehaene et al. 1993).

  4. For a review of the various behavioural paradigms and theoretical/methodological controversies see Milner and Dyde (2003).

References

  • Aglioti S, DeSouza JF, Goodale MA (1995) Size contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Curr Biol 5:679–685

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Andres M, Davare M, Pesenti M, Olivier E, Seron X (2004) Number magnitude and grip aperture interaction. Neuroreport 15:2773–2777

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Binkofski F, Buccino G, Posse S, Seitz RJ, Rizzolatti G, Freund H (1999) A fronto–parietal circuit for object manipulation in man: evidence from an fMRI study. Eu J Neurosci 11(9):3276–3286

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Burton G (1992) Nonvisual judgement of the crossability of path gaps. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 18:698–713

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Carello C, Grosofsky A, Reichel FD, Solomon HY, Turvey MT (1989) Visually perceiving what is reachable. Ecol Psychol 1:27–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Connolly JD, Andersen RA, Goodale MA (2003) FMRI evidence for a “parietal reach region” in the human brain. Exp Brain Res 153(2):140–145

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Coull JT, Nobre AC (1998) Where and when to pay attention: the neural systems for directing attention to spatial locations and to time intervals as revealed by both PET and fMRI. J Neurosci 18(18):7426–7435

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Culham JC, Danckert SL, DeSouza JF, Gati JS, Menon RS, Goodale MA (2003) Visually guided grasping produces fMRI activation in dorsal but not ventral stream brain areas. Exp Brain Res 153(2):180–189

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dehaene S, Bossini S, Giraud P (1993) The mental representation of parity and number magnitude. J Exp Psychol Gen 122(3):371–396

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dehaene S, Dehaene-Lambertz G, Cohen L (1998) Abstract representation of numbers in the animal and human brain. Trends Neurosci 21:355–361

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Friedman WJ (1984) Analog and semantic models of judgements about the months of the year. Mem Cognit 12(3):306–313

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gentilucci M, Gangitano M (1998) Influence of automatic word reading on motor control. Eur J Neurosci 10:752–756

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gevers W, Reynvoet B, Fias W (2003) The mental representation of ordinal sequences is spatially organized. Cognition 87:87–95

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson JJ (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Glover S, Rosenbaum DA, Graham J, Dixon P (2004) Grasping the meaning of words. Exp Brain Res 154:103–108

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Glover S, Dixon P (2002) Semantics affects the planning but not the control of grasping. Exp Brain Res 146:383–387

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Goodale MA, Humphreys GK (1998) The objects of action and perception. Cognition 67:181–207

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Goodale MA, Milner AD (2004) Sight unseen: an exploration of consciousness and unconscious vision. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Grèzes J, Decety J (2001) Functional anatomy of execution, mental simulation, observation and verb generation of actions: a meta-analysis. Hum Brain Mapp 12:1–19

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Grèzes J, Decety J (2002) Does visual perception of object afford action? Evidence from a neuroimaging study. Neuropsychologia 40:212–222

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Grèzes J, Tucker M, Armory J, Ellis R, Passingham PE (2003) Objects automatically potentiate action: an fMRI study of implicit processing. Eur J Neurosci 17:2735–2740

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton JME, Sanford AJ (1978) The symbolic distance effect for alphabetic order judgements: a subjective report and reaction time analysis. Q J Exp Psychol 30:33–43

    Google Scholar 

  • Jeannerod M (1997) The cognitive neuroscience of action. Blackwell, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Jeannerod M (1999) To act or not to act: perspectives on the representation of actions. Q J Exp Psychol 52(A):1–29

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kessler B, Treiman R, Mullennix J. (2002) Phonetic biases in voice key response time measurements. J Mem Lang 47:145–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lovelace EA, Snodgrass RD (1971) Decision time for alphabetic order of letter pairs. J Exp Psychol 88(2):258–264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mark LS, Balliet JA, Craver KD, Douglas SD, Fox T (1990) What an actor must do in order to perceive the affordance for sitting. Ecol Psychol 2:325–366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milner AD, Dyde RT (2003) Orientation and disorientation: illusory perception and the real world. In: Johnson-Frey SH (eds) Taking action: cognitive neuroscience perspectives on intentional acts. MIT Press, Cambridge pp 3–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Milner AD, Goodale MA (1995) The visual brain in action. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Moyer RS, Landauer TK (1967) Time required for judgements of numerical inequality. Nature 215:1519–1520

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Pesenti M, Thioux M, Seron X, De Volder A (2000) Neuroanatomical substrate of Arabic number processing, numerical comparison and simple addition: a PET study. J Cognit Neurosci 121(3):461–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinel P, Piazza M, Le Bihan D, Dehaene S (2004) Distributed and overlapping cerebral representations of number, size, and luminance during comparative judgements. Neuron 41(6):983–993

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzolatti G, Arbib MA (1998) Language within our grasp. Trends Neurosci 21:188–194

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Schneider W, Eschmann A, Zuccolotto A (2002) E-Prime reference guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools

  • Shmuelof L, Zohary E (2005) Dissociation between ventral and dorsal fMRI activation during object and action recognition. Neuron 47:457–470

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Simon O, Kherif F, Flandin G, Poline JB, Riviere D, Mangin JF, Le Bihan D, Dehaene S (2004) Automatized clustering and functional geometry of human parietofrontal networks for language, space, and number. Neuroimage 23(3):1192–1202

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor DA, Kim JO, Sudevan P (1984) Representation of linear orders. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 10(1):61–71

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tucker M, Ellis R (1998) On the relations between seen objects and components of potential actions. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 24:830–846

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Turconi E, Seron X (2002) Dissociation between order and quantity meanings in a patient with Gerstmann syndrome. Cortex 38:911–914

    Google Scholar 

  • Turconi E, Campbell JID, Seron X (2006) Numerical order and quantity processing in number comparison. Cognition 98:273–285

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Turconi E, Jemel B, Rossion B, Seron X (2004) Electrophysiological evidence for differential processing of numerical quantity and order in humans. Cognit Brain Res 21:22–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walsh V (2003) A theory of magnitude: common cortical metrics of time, space and quantity. Trends Cognit Sci 7:483–488

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warren WH (1984) Perceiving affordances: visual guidance of stair climbing. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 11:683–703

    Google Scholar 

  • Zago L, Pesenti M, Mellet E, Crivello F, Mazoyer B, Tzourio-Mazoyer N (2001) Neural correlates of simple and complex mental calculation. Neuroimage 13(2):14–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zorzi M, Priftis K, Meneghello F, Marenzi R, Umiltà C (2006) The spatial representation of numerical and non-numerical sequences: evidence from neglect. Neuropsychologia 44(7):1061–1067

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Marie Curie Research Training Networks of the European Community (MRTN-CT-2003-504927, Numbra project), by grant 01/06-267 from the Communauté Française de Belgique—Actions de Recherche Concertées (Belgium), and grant P5/04 from the IUAP Program of the Belgian Federal Goverment. MA is postdoctoral researcher and MP is research associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unité de Neurosciences Cognitives, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place Cardinal Mercier, 10, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Arnaud Badets, Michael Andres, Samuel Di Luca & Mauro Pesenti

Authors
  1. Arnaud Badets
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Michael Andres
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Samuel Di Luca
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Mauro Pesenti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mauro Pesenti.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Badets, A., Andres, M., Di Luca, S. et al. Number magnitude potentiates action judgements. Exp Brain Res 180, 525–534 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-0870-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-0870-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation