Spatial Representation Of The Zodiac Order Sequence Studies

In the field of the study of spatial representation, the most well-known one is the spatial number association response code (SNARC) effect, which implies the association of number and space by showing the interaction of quantity information or ordinal information of numbers and spatial information under some certain behavior experiment paradigms. In recent studies, other kinds of order sequence such as time, name of month, name of the days of week and letters from the alphabet were found to possess spatial characteristics. The current research adopted Chinese Zodiac as order stimulus materials.4experiments composed this research with4different experiment paradigms to explore the existence and reliability of the order sequence association, the automatic activation of this association. And each experiment were participated with both Chinese group whose native language is Chinese and Uyghur-Chinese bilingual group whose native language is Uyghur to probe the influence of reading direction of their native language.Experiment1adopted Chinese zodiac order comparison paradigm with3factor with-subject design: the position of order stimulus in the sequence (front half, back half)×response hand (left, right)×distance (the distance between stimulus and the midpoint of the sequence3,4,5,6). And the indexes of the association of order material and space were position-response compatibility effect:the interaction of position and response hand and the distance effect, which revealed the linear representation of order sequence. Both Chinese and Uyghur-Chinese bilingual groups demonstrated significant effect on these indexes. And the results revealed the left-to-right association of Chinese zodiac for Chinese group and right-to-left association for Uyghur-Chinese bilingual group.Experiment2was stimulus pair comparison paradigm with3factor within-subject design:the position of order stimulus in the sequence (front half, back half)×response hand (left, right)×distance (the distance between stimulus and the midpoint of the sequence1,3). The indexes in this experiment were also position-response compatibility effect and distance effect. The Chinese group showed significant effects on both of the indexes and the Uyghur-Chinese bilingual group showed no significant effects on these indexes.Experiment3was spatial cuing paradigm with3factor with-subject design:the position of order stimulus in the sequence (front half, back half) xtarget side (left, right)×SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony250ms,500ms,750ms). The index in this experiment was attentional SNARC effect which reveals the location of visual attention caused by the position information of stimulus. And the results showed no significant effect of both groups, which suggested that merely presenting a single number at the center of the screen, was proved to be unable to ignite the orientation of visual spatial attention for both groups.Experiment4was stimulus matching paradigm with2factor within-subject design: the position of order stimulus in the sequence (front half, back half) xresponse hand (left, right) for matched trials and1factor within-subject design:distance(the distance between the stimuli appeared one after another1,3,6) for unmatched trials. The indexes to uncover the order spatial association were still position-response compatibility effect and distance effect. The results showed no significant effect of position-response compatibility for both groups, and only the Chinese group showed significant distance effect which was opposite to traditional distance effect. This result may suggest the order space association was unable to invoke automatically and the automatic process of semantic information may be revealed in this experiment.Taken the results of the4experiment together, this research reached followingconclusions:1,The order space association of Chinese zodiac was verified in this research when order information was task-relevant.2,Merely presenting a single stimulus was unable to cause the shift of visual attention. Order space association was unable to be invoked automatically and the activation of other semantic information may be an automatic process for Chinese group.3,The pattern of this association was influenced by reading direction of native language in order comparison task and when two stimulus were presented simultaneously the opposite reading direction of native language and second language may result in the absence of position-response compatibility effect.