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Masked priming effect with canonical finger numeral configurations

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Abstract

Discrete numerosities can be represented by various finger configurations. The impact of counting strategies on these configurations and their possible semantic status were investigated in young adults. Experiment 1 showed that young adults named numerical finger configurations faster when they conformed to their own canonical finger-counting habits than when they did not. Experiment 2 showed that numeral finger configurations used as unconsciously presented primes speeded up numerical comparative judgements of Arabic numeral targets. Participants responded faster and made fewer errors with numerical than with non-numerical primes, and when primes and targets were congruent (i.e., leading to the same response). Moreover, this priming effect generalised to novel never consciously seen numerosities for canonical configurations but not for non-canonical ones. These results support the idea that canonical finger configurations automatically activate number semantics whereas non-canonical ones do not.

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Notes

  1. Following the semiotic taxonomy introduced by Peirce (1931), we distinguish three kinds of signs: symbols, indices and icons. In symbolic reference, the link between the sign and the object it refers to is established by convention, as is the case for human languages. In indexical reference, the sign is related to the object by a physical or temporal relation (e.g., some alarm calls used by some animal species with specific reference to predators, magnitudes or directions). In iconic reference, the sign shares some features with its referent. An instance of such signing is cardinal icons (e.g., notches on a stick).

  2. From the Latin monstrare, meaning to show to others. The way of raising fingers to show numerosities to other people (e.g., using the index and middle fingers for the quantity two, which differs from counting to two using the thumb and index finger).

  3. Configurations where both hands are used to express numerosities less than five were avoided. To the best of our knowledge, there are no reports of finger-counting systems using two “incomplete” hands: all systems use all the fingers of one hand and only then is the other hand brought into use (Butterworth 1999b; Ifrah 1981).

  4. Variables linked to the primes (e.g., distance from prime to target, distance from prime to 5) could not be entered into this analysis as they did not exist for the trials using neutral primes.

  5. It is known that, in bipolar adjective couples, the two adjectives are not equivalent. One of them can be used for both sides of the continuum of judgement (the unmarked adjective) whereas the other cannot (the marked adjective). In linguistic models, the lexically unmarked sense is stored and retrieved more quickly than the marked one because of simpler memory coding (Clark and Stafford 1969). For example, in the long–short couple, long is related to the name of the whole continuum (length) and is thus processed more efficiently, yielding the observed effect.

  6. The size of the prime (Small: 1–4 vs. Large: 6–9) was introduced with the type of prime (Canonical vs. Non-canonical) and the target size (Small: 1 and 4 vs. Large: 6 and 9) as within-subject variables in a separate ANOVA not fully reported here. Prime size had no main effect [F(1,56) < 1], but it interacted with target size [F(1,56) = 35.999, P < 0.001]: responses to the small targets were faster when introduced by small than large primes [t(56) = −3.771, P < 0.001] and responses to the large targets were faster when introduced by large than small primes [t(56) = 4.243, P < 0.001]. Moreover, there was a marginally significant interaction between the three variables [F(1,56) = 2.977, P = 0.089] showing that the above described pattern held for canonical primes only: for non-canonical primes, small targets were not better primed by small than large primes [t(56) = −0.79, P = 0.433].

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by Grant 01/06-267 from the Communauté Française de Belgique—Actions de Recherche Concertées (Belgium). We would like to thank Manuela Serra for her help during data collection and Michael Andres for helpful comments on a previous version of this article. MP is research associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium).

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

    Samuel Di Luca & Mauro Pesenti

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  1. Samuel Di Luca
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  2. Mauro Pesenti
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Correspondence to Mauro Pesenti.

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Di Luca, S., Pesenti, M. Masked priming effect with canonical finger numeral configurations. Exp Brain Res 185, 27–39 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1132-8

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