Beyond magnitude: Judging ordinality of symbolic number is unrelated to magnitude comparison and independently relates to individual differences in arithmetic

Authors

Celia Goffin, Numerical Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology & Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Daniel Ansari, Numerical Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology & Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: .Follow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2016

Journal

Cognition

Volume

150

First Page

68

Last Page

76

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1016/j.cognition.2016.01.018

Abstract

In the field of numerical cognition, ordinality, or the sequence of numerals, has received much less attention than cardinality, or the number of items in a set. Therefore it is unclear whether the numerical effects generated from ordinality and cardinality tasks are associated, and whether they relate to math achievement and more domain-general variables in similar ways. To address these questions, sixty adults completed ordinality, cardinality, visual-spatial working memory, inhibitory control and math achievement tasks. The numerical distance effect from the cardinality task and the reverse distance effect from the ordinality task were both relatively reliable but not statistically significantly associated with one another. Additionally, both distance effects predicted independent unique variance in math scores, even when visual-spatial working memory and inhibitory control were included in the regression model. These findings provide support for dissociation in the mechanisms underlying cardinal and ordinal processing of number symbols and thereby highlight the critical role played by ordinality in symbolic numerical cognition.