Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Developmental Psychology

PDF

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Symbolic numerical magnitude

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

How Do Humans Process Magnitudes? An Examination Of The Neural And Cognitive Underpinnings Of Symbols, Quantities, And Size In Adults And Children, Helen Moriah Sokolowski Oct 2019

How Do Humans Process Magnitudes? An Examination Of The Neural And Cognitive Underpinnings Of Symbols, Quantities, And Size In Adults And Children, Helen Moriah Sokolowski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A striking way that humans differ from other species is our unique ability to represent and manipulate symbols. This ability to process numerical magnitudes symbolically (e.g., ‘three’, ‘3’) is widely thought to be supported by an ancient system that evolved to process nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes (i.e., quantities). In this thesis, I present four empirical studies to uncover whether symbolic representations are indeed supported by the system that evolved to process quantities, or if symbolic representations are sub-served by a similar but ultimately distinct system.

In experiments 1 and 2, I investigate how the adult brain processes symbols and quantities using …


Cortical Representation Underlying The Semantic Processing Of Numerical Symbols: Evidence From Adult And Developmental Studies, Stephan Erich Vogel Aug 2013

Cortical Representation Underlying The Semantic Processing Of Numerical Symbols: Evidence From Adult And Developmental Studies, Stephan Erich Vogel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Humans possess the remarkable ability to process numerical information using numerical symbols such as Arabic digits. A growing body of neuroimaging work has provided new insights into the neural correlates associated with symbolic numerical magnitude processing. However, little is known about the cortical specialization underlying the representation of symbolic numerical magnitude in adults and children. To constrain our current knowledge, I conducted a series of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that aimed to better understand the functional specialization of symbolic numerical magnitudes representation in the human brain.

Using a number line estimation task, the first study contrasted the brain …