Eye Movement Research On SNARC Effect On Different Processing Levels Of Dice Pattern

Recently, the development of human numerical ability has attracted more and more attention. In the existing study, people have already found that there are some specific effects in the progress of number processing, one of which is Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes effect (SNARC effect). Instinctively , number processing do not require spatial information. But in fact there is close relation between number and space, number processing needs many kinds of object participate, and each object has the spatial character, so the nonfigurative number concept and spatial information is closely related. In some researchers'idea, the reason of SNARC effect is that numbers are represented along a horizontally extending"mental number line", small numbers are on the left of the line, and large numbers are on the right. But subsequently study indicated that the spatial representation of numbers is number map rather than number line, because SNARC effect was also found on the vertical direction. Concerning the number modality, there are also many researches, Nuerk, Wood & Willmes(2005)found that the SNARC effect consistently consist in some modality/notation conditions, including auditory number words, visual Arabic numeral, visual number word and visual dice pattern. Furthermore, Fischer (2001), Shen, M. W. (2006) discovered that when do the shallow processing of number the SNARC effect is also exist.Eye movement study started from 19th century, at that time, eye movement technology was mostly used to research reading. Recent 20 years, psychologists pay more attention to the relation of eye movement, perception and cognition. Eye movement technology application fields including reading, advertisement, drive, pathopsychology, attention and so on in psychology at present. But there are not many eye movement researches in number processing at home and abroad. Schwarz & Keus(2004)tried to found SNARC effect using eye movement, the results showed that the SNARC effect exists in both the horizontal direction and vertical direction. Fischer, Warlop, Hill, et al. (2004) also found the SNARC effect using eye movement form. If we use the notation of dice pattern, do the shallow and deep processing, and make monitoring reaction at horizontal and vertical direction, use the eye movement instead of hand, whether it will appear the SNARC effect or not? It is the aim of this research.There are four experiments in this research, in order to study the SNARC effect on the horizontal and vertical direction. In the first and second experiment, presenting probe display on the horizontal direction after the dice appeared, and let experimenter move eyes to left or right, recording the reaction time, in order to explore the SNARC effect. In the latter two experiments, presenting probe display on the vertical direction after the dice appeared, and let experimenter move eyes to upper side or down side, recording the reaction time, in order to see there will appear the SNARC effect or not.The results suggested:(1) On the horizontal direction, when did the shallow processing of dice(only browsed them), the number of dice made the reaction time of eye movements difference: for smaller dice, the reaction time of left was shorter than of right; for larger dice, the reaction time of right was shorter than of left.(2) On the horizontal direction, when did the deep processing of dice (experimenter reported that the number of dice was more than 5 or less than 5), the number of dice also made the reaction time of eye movements difference: for smaller dice, the reaction time of left was shorter than of right; for larger dice, the reaction time of right was shorter than of left.(3) On vertical direction, when did the shallow processing of dice (only browsed them), there were no statistically significant differences in reaction time of eye movements: no matter what the number of dice was large or small, the reaction time to the upper response was not different form the reaction time to the lower response.(4) On vertical direction, when did the shallow processing of dice (experimenter reported that the number of dice was more than 5 or less than 5), there were no statistically significant differences in reaction time of eye movement: no matter what the number of dice was large or small, the reaction time to the upper response was not different form the reaction time to the lower response.To sum up, the following conditions were drawn:(1) On the horizontal direction, when did the shallow processing of dice, the SNARC effect was found because of different numbers of dice.(2) On the horizontal direction, when did the deep processing of dice, the SNARC effect was also found because of different numbers of dice.(3) On the vertical direction, when did the shallow processing of dice, there was no SNARC effect exist, no matter what the number of dice was large or small.(4) On the vertical direction, when did the deep processing of dice, there was also no SNARC effect exist, no matter what the number of dice was large or small.