title: The perception of temporal order along the mental number line.
abstract: R. Sekuler, P. Tynan, and E. Levinson (1973) found that when 2 characters are presented side-by-side with a short onset asynchrony, subjectively they often appear in a "first-left, then-right" order. The authors of this article conducted 6 experiments in which observers judged the temporal order (TOJs) in which 2 digits were presented. They found a consistent TOJ benefit (larger d;) when the numerically smaller digit was presented first, even though this semantic information was irrelevant to the task and unrelated to the correct response. They concluded that digits located to the left of the mental number line are transmitted faster to a central comparison stage, which represents an "internal counterpart" to the Sekuler et al. (1973) finding regarding external locations. A corresponding benefit is found for letters pairs (e.g., A-Z) and also for mixed digit-letter pairs (e.g., 1-Z).
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, P.O Box 60 15 63, Potsdam D-14415, Germany. wschwarz@uni-potsdam.de
authors: Wolf
authors: W
authors: Schwarz
authors: Anne-Kathrin
authors: AK
authors: Eiselt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D012660:Semantics; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013028:Space Perception; D013998:Time Perception; D014796:Visual Perception