title: Spatial representations of numbers and letters in children.
abstract: Different lines of evidence suggest that children's mental representations of numbers are spatially organized in form of a mental number line. It is, however, still unclear whether a spatial organization is specific for the numerical domain or also applies to other ordinal sequences in children. In the present study, children (n = 129) aged 8-9 years were asked to indicate the midpoint of lines flanked by task-irrelevant digits or letters. We found that the localization of the midpoint was systematically biased toward the larger digit. A similar, but less pronounced, effect was detected for letters with spatial biases toward the letter succeeding in the alphabet. Instead of assuming domain-specific forms of spatial representations, we suggest that ordinal information expressing relations between different items of a sequence might be spatially coded in children, whereby numbers seem to convey this kind of information in the most salient way.
authors: Department of Education and Human Development, German Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF) Frankfurt am Main, Germany ; Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA) Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors: Jan
authors: J
authors: Lonnemann
authors: Janosch
authors: J
authors: Linkersdörfer
authors: Telse
authors: T
authors: Nagler
authors: Marcus
authors: M
authors: Hasselhorn
authors: Sven
authors: S
authors: Lindberg
keywords: cardinal representations; line bisection; mental number line; ordinal representations; spatial representations
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