Treccani, B. 1 , Sellaro, R. 2 , Job, R. 1 & Cubelli, R. 1, 2
1 DiSCoF. University of Trento. Rovereto (TN), Italy
2 CIMeC. University of Trento. Rovereto (TN), Italy
Left-to-right readers tend to react faster to small numbers when a left response is required and to larger numbers when a right response is required. This effect (i.e., the SNARC effect) is attributed to the automatic activation of spatial representations of number magnitudes, which interact with response-position codes. In particular, the SNARC effect suggests that numbers are spatially represented on a mental number line, which is oriented from left to right. The present study aimed at investigating whether the typical size of objects, as with number magnitude, is automatically represented, even if it is irrelevant to the task, and whether this representation is spatial in nature. Participants were asked to classify a centrally-presented picture as belonging to either the category of living or non-living entities, by pressing a left- or right-side key. Left responses were faster when the picture depicted a small object (e.g. an ant), whereas right responses were faster in the case of large objects (e.g. an elephant). These results indicate that the information about object typical size is automatically activated and suggest that this information is spatially coded: small objects are represented on the left and large objects on the right.