The Representation Of Symbolic Numbers In Adults

How does symbolic numbers get their numerical meanings? Theories and researches on this question mostly focus on an independent number representation system(ANS or ENS).However,evidence on a co-exist system of ANS and ENS is lacked.In this study,employing one hundred and six college students,researchers design three experiments by changing the numbers in the Arabic number comparison task with pointing task.Researchers explore the evidence of a co-existing system of ANS and ENS in the representations of Arabic numbers.By comparing one-digit numbers(#1-#9)and two-digit numbers(91-99)in two blocks,experiment one finds that the representations of two-digit number is more compressive than one-digit number,indicating an exist of ANS.To further explore whether there also is an exist of ENS in symbolic number representation,researchers compare one-digit numbers in different notations(1-9,#1-#9,01-09)in experiment two.The results show that the representation of Group 3(01-09)is more compressive than both Group 1(1-9)and Group 2(#1-#9),while no significant difference is found between the first two groups.The different representation forms of Group3 indicates a co-exist of ANS and ENS and researchers infer that the activation of different systems may relate to the magnitude of numbers.Therefore,experiment three compare the performance of different two-digit numbers and find out a characteristic of linear representation,indicating mainly ENS representation in this task.In conclusion,this research proves that symbolic numbers can be represented not only by ENS,but also by ANS.And researchers infer that the representation of symbolic numbers is probably activated by both ANS and ENS at the same time,while the magnitude of numbers and experiment context may influence the activation degree of each system.This research has provided a strong evidence to the exist of both ANS and ENS in symbolic number representation.