Investigating overlap in representations of non-symbolic quantities: Number, area, and fire

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Justin Bonny¹ (justin.bonny@morgan.edu), Micah Russell¹; ¹Morgan State University

There is active debate about shared neurocognitive mechanisms when approximating non-symbolic quantities without symbols or tools. Prior investigations focusing on number and area using comparison tasks have observed associations in performance and neural correlates in the intraparietal sulcus. The present study took a novel approach for examining overlap in number and area approximations: associations with fire intensity. Like number and area, ratio effects have been observed with visual fire intensity, which refer to modulations in performance when comparing two values as differences vary. We hypothesized that evidence of shared mechanisms for number and area approximations would manifest as correlations with fire comparison task performance. Participants (N=148, recruited from Prolific.co) completed three online tasks: two comparison tasks (fire; number or area, randomly assigned) and an ordinal letter task (judging whether three letters were arranged alphabetically; used as a control for general ordinal ability). During the comparison tasks, error rates and response times when judging which of a pair of values was greater were recorded as the ratio difference varied. Significant positive associations between fire and number (r=.40, p<.001) and area (r=.37, p=.014) performance were observed. These remained significant when controlling for letter task performance (ps<.03) with no significant differences in association strength with fire. The results indicated that fire comparison performance was associated with that of number and area. This suggests that approximate representations of these quantities were supported by at least partially overlapping cognitive processes. This research further extends the types of non-symbolic quantities to approximations of visual fire intensity.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Vision