The Research On The Cause Of Snarc Effect-induced By Size Or Order Information?

Subjects were asked to response for numbers by keys according to certain standard. However the classification criteria is, the smaller number was respond faster by left hand than right. And the larger number was respond faster by right hand than left. This phenomenon was called SNARC effect. And it widely exists in Cognitive processing on a variety of symbols digital, no-symbols numbers and ordered materials. Different views for the reason of SNARC effect appeared in the processing of number in the Academic circles. Part of the scholars think that people represented small number in the left side of the space, and represented large number in the right space according to the size of digital. It is clear that SNARC effect was caused by digital size information in this view. And some scholars think that the SNARC effect was caused by the order information of material. They used some material such as English letters which have order information but haven’t size information had verified their view. In this paper, three studies and five experiments were designed to confirm whether the SNARC effect was caused by size information or order information. In experiment one, east and west longitudes were shown at fixation and participants was asked to judge which side the presented longitude in compare corresponding fifty longitude. The results found that SNARC effect was appeared in east longitude and reverse SNARC effect was appeared in west longitude. In experiment two, Chinese and Japanese language assessing rank numbers were used and participants were asked to judge whether presented rank number was higher or lower than corresponding third rank. The results found that reverse SNARC effect was appeared in Chinese language assessing rank numbers in positive number’s group. But SNARC effect was appeared in Japanese language assessing rank numbers in negative number’s group. On the contrary, SNARC effect was appeared in Chinese language assessing rank numbers in negative number’s group. But reverse SNARC effect was appeared in Japanese language assessing rank numbers in positive number’s group. The target detection paradigm was explored in experiment three and experiment four to examine whether the English letters can cause attention transfer to different space under different reference standard. The results found that attentional SNARC effect was appeared in the reference of alphabet, but reverse attentional SNARC effect was appeared in the reference of English word. In experiment five, different colors of solid round was rapidly shown at fixation in regular sequence, subjects were asked to which position was the specified solid round was. The result found that SNARC effect survived in processing of time sequence in working memory. In a word, through these three studies the following conclusions could be got.(1) SNARC effect was induced by order information.(2) Reading and writing habits is not the only condition which impact SNARC effect direction. When the experiment material contains a variety of sequence information, SNARC effect direction depends on the all order information.(3) SNARC effect is very stubborn, it even can be survived in processing of time sequence in short-term memory.