Welcome Day 2019/20

Venue: Palazzo Fedrigotti, Corso Bettini 31 (Rovereto) – Conference Room  

Time: 15.30

 

Speaker: Michael Chan-Reynolds - Trent University, Canada

 

 

Scientific coordinator: Maria Paola Paladino

 

Do we read the word ‘fore’ in the same way that we read the word ‘four’? What about the digit ‘4’? The most widely used approach for answering this question has been to examine whether number words and digits show the same patterns of effects (e.g., the SNARC effect; Nuerk, Wood, & Willmes, 2005). Here, I propose an alternative approach where the methods and logic of the task switching paradigm are used to assess whether there is a cost switching between stimulus classes. Instead of assessing whether two classes of stimuli elicit similar behaviours, this new approach assesses whether the mind/brain needs to reconfigure in order to processes two different classes of stimuli. A series of experiments will be discussed that systematically maps out processing differences between Arabic digits (e.g., ‘4’), number words (e.g., ‘four’) and non-number words (e.g., ‘fore’).