Authors: Arnaud Badets Cédric A Bouquet François Ric Mauro Pesenti
Publish Date: 2012/06/29
Volume: 221, Issue: 1, Pages: 43-49
Abstract
Recent studies have demonstrated that conceptual and abstract knowledge could rely on and could be influenced by sensorymotor processing of usual goaldirected actions In line with this interactions have been reported between number magnitude and finger grip with for example smallmagnitude numbers priming grip closure and largemagnitude numbers priming grip aperture Here we assessed whether observing a closing or opening grip was able to influence the magnitude of the numbers produced in a random number generation task and we tested whether this effect was specific to biological hand actions by using nonbiological fake hands with the same closure or aperture amplitude The participants were asked to produce as randomly as possible numbers between 1 and 10 after they observed a change in posture ie grip closing or grip opening or in colour ie red or blue hand The results revealed that the participants produced more often small numbers than large ones after observing a grip closing whereas they produced equally often small and large numbers after observing a grip opening or colour changes Importantly this effect was only present for the biological hands but not for the nonbiological fake hands This finding demonstrates that observing a biological grip closing conveys smallmagnitude information which in turn influences the mental selection of a numerical response We discuss our results in the light of the internal random generator process proposed in the domain of numerical cognition and argue that number semantics is stored with a code governed by sensorymotor mechanismsLa Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société de Poitiers France financially supported this study We are grateful to Yves Almecija CNRSUMR7295 for his valuable comments for the editing of the pictures used in the present study MP is a research associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research Belgium
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