The Attentional-SNARC effect 16 years later: no automatic space-number association (taking into account finger counting style, imagery vividness, and learning style in 174 participants)

The Attentional-SNARC effect (Att-SNARC) originally described by Fischer et al. (Nat Neurosci 6(6):555, 2003), consists of faster RTs to visual targets in the left side of space when these are preceded by small-magnitude Arabic cues at central fixation and by faster RTs to targets in the right side of space when these are preceded by large-magnitude cues. Verifying the consistency and reliability of this effect is important, because the effect would suggest an inherent association between the representation of space and that of number magnitude, while a number of recent studies provided no positive evidence in favour of the Att-SNARC and the inherency of this association (van Dijck et al. in Q J Exp Psychol 67(8):1500-1513, 2014; Zanolie and Pecher in Front Psychol 5:987, 2014; Fattorini et al. in Cortex 73:298-316, 2015; Pinto et al. in Cortex, DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2017.12.015, 2018). Here, we re-analysed Att-SNARC data that we have collected in 174 participants over different studies run in our laboratory. Most important, in a subsample of 79 participants, we also verified whether the strength and reliability of the Att-SNARC is eventually linked inter-individual variations in finger counting style, imagery vividness, and verbal/visual learning style. We found no evidence for the Att-SNARC effect or for the influence of finger counting style, imagery vividness, and learning style on its direction or consistency. These results confirm no inherent link between orienting of spatial attention and representation of number magnitudes. We propose that this link is rather determined by the joint use of spatial and number magnitude or parity codes in the performance of the numerical task at hand.