title: Finger counting habit and spatial-numerical association in children and adults.
abstract: Sensory-motor experiences are known to build up concrete and abstract concepts during the lifespan. The present study aimed to test how finger counting habits (right-hand vs. left-hand starters) could influence the spatial-numerical representation in number-to-position (explicit) and digit-string bisection (implicit) tasks. The subjects were Italian primary school children (N=184, from the first to the fifth year) and adults (N=42). No general preference for right- or left-starting in the finger counting was found. In the explicit task, right- or left-starting did not affect performance. In the implicit task, the right-hand starters shifted from the left to the right space when bisecting small and large numbers respectively, while the left-hand starters shifted from the right to the left space with higher leftward bias for large numbers. The finger configuration in Italian children and adults influences the spatial-numerical representation, but only when implicit number processing is required by the task.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Italy. Electronic address: marco.fabbri@unina2.it.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fabbri
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Guarini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055641:Mathematical Concepts; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Embodied cognition; Finger counting; Number bisection task; Number-to-position task; Spatial–numerical association