Processing symbolic numbers: The example of distance and size effects

Abstract

According to the dominant view in the literature, several numerical cognition phenomena are explained coherently and parsimoniously by the Approximate Number System (ANS) model, which model supposes an evolutionarily old, simple representation behind many numerical tasks. We offer an alternative model, the Discrete Semantic System (DSS) to explain the same phenomena in symbolic numerical tasks. Our alternative model supposes that symbolic numbers are stored in a network of nodes, similar to conceptual or linguistic networks. The benefit of the DSS model is demonstrated through the example of distance and size effects of comparison task.