Influence of different spatial representations on the SNARC effect for letters: Electrophysiological evidence

Abstract

Studies have previously demonstrated that different spatial representations may affect the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect for numbers; however, limited studies have assessed the SNARC effect for letters. In this study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to measure the influence of two spatial representation modes (ruler and clock) on the SNARC effect. The ruler produced a SNARC-like effect; i.e., the left hand reacted faster than the right to the letters that appeared before N in the alphabet; the right hand reacted faster than the left to the letters that appeared after N, whereas the clock produced a reverse SNARC effect. In addition, the ERP data showed that the SNARC-like effect for letters in both representations induced significant activation in the frontal and parietal regions, indicating that the same brain areas are involved in processing letters and numbers in terms of spatial dimensions. This study further identified the conditions for the SNARC effect and proved that the SNARC effect is attributed to the simultaneous participation of brain regions for sequence and spatial information processing.