Processing symbolic numbers with the Discrete Semantic System
Attila Krajcsi 1, Gábor Lengyel 2, Petia Kojouharova 3
1 Cognitive Psychology Department, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
2 Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
3 Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Budapest, Hungary
The widespread Analog Magnitude System model suggests that many effects of basic number processing (such as the distance and the size effects in number comparison, or the number-space interference in parity decision) can be explained by an evolutionarily old, simple representation working according to Weber’s law. In an alternative account, we propose that an entirely different architecture model, the Discrete Semantic System can also explain the very same phenomena in symbolic number processing. Additionally, we introduce several new phenomena that can be explained only by the newly proposed model, but not by the classic account.