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Numbers reorient visuo-spatial attention during cancellation tasks

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Abstract

Numbers induce shifts of spatial attention on the left or the right sides of external space as a function of their magnitude. However, whether this number–space association is restricted to the linear horizontal extensions, or extends to the whole visual scene, is still an open question. This study investigates, by means of a cancellation paradigm, the influence of numerical magnitude during scanning tasks in which participants freely explore complex visual scenes unconstrained towards either the horizontal or the vertical unidimensional axes. Five cancellation tasks were adapted in which Arabic digits were used as targets or distracters, in structured (lines and columns) or unstructured visual displays, with a smaller (2 or 3 types of distracters) or larger (10 or more types of distracters) sets of stimuli. Results show that the participants’ hits distribution was a function of number magnitude: shifted on the left for small and on the right for large numbers. This effect was maximised when numerical cues were sparse, randomly arranged and, critically, irrelevant to the task. Overall, this study provides novel evidence from visuo-spatial exploratory cancellation tasks for an attentional shift induced by number magnitude.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Carlo Toneatto for the helpful technical implementation of the tasks. Samuel Di Luca is a post-doctoral researcher and Mauro Pesenti is a research associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium), while Giuseppe Vallar is a professor at the Milano-Bicocca (M-B) University of Milano, and Luisa Girelli is an associate professor at the M-B. Giuseppe Vallar has been supported in part by a FAR Grant from the University of Milano-Bicocca, and by a Ricerca Corrente Grant from the IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de Neuroscience Système et Cognition, Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place Cardinal Mercier, 10, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Samuel Di Luca & Mauro Pesenti

  2. Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Giuseppe Vallar & Luisa Girelli

  3. Laboratorio di Neuropsicologia, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

    Giuseppe Vallar

Authors
  1. Samuel Di Luca
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  2. Mauro Pesenti
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  3. Giuseppe Vallar
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  4. Luisa Girelli
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Correspondence to Samuel Di Luca.

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Di Luca, S., Pesenti, M., Vallar, G. et al. Numbers reorient visuo-spatial attention during cancellation tasks. Exp Brain Res 225, 549–557 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3393-0

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