The role of cognitive control in the SNARC effect: A review

The spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect, in which people respond to small numbers faster with the left hand and to large numbers faster with the right hand, is a popular topic in cognitive psychology. Some well-known theoretical accounts explaining this effect include the mental number line model, polarity correspondence principle, dual-route model, and working memory account. However, these fail to explain the finding that the size of the SNARC effect is modulated by cognitive control. Here, we propose a new account-a cognitive control-based view of the SNARC effect. This view argues that the SNARC effect is fundamentally determined by cognitive control in resolving conflicts during stimulus-response mapping. Several subcomponents of cognitive control, such as working memory, mental or task set shifting, inhibition control, and conflict adaptation, can easily modulate the SNARC effect. The cognitive control-based view can account for the flexible SNARC effect observed in diverse task situations while providing new insight into its mechanism.

Position, Visual Complexity, and Semantic Radicals in Left-Right Structured Chinese Characters: A Naturalistic Experiment on Character Simplification

In the mid-20th century, the largest sociocultural psychological “experiment” in the history of Chinese orthography was carried out to simplify the traditional characters. To date, little or no psychological research has addressed the factors behind the simplification process. This article reports on an exploratory investigation that focused on the possible effects of position, visual complexity, and semantic radicals on simplification of the components of left-right structured traditional Chinese characters (Japanese kanji). The main findings are that the left- and right-side components are simplified equally often, that the left-side components are visually simpler than the right-side components, that the threshold for simplification is 6 strokes for the left-side components and 8 strokes for the right-side components, and that, with visual complexity held constant, the right-side components are more exempt from simplification than the left-side components. Three theoretical principles are proposed to account for character simplification: Pay attention to the left, start simple and meaningful, and simplify the less informative. Understanding the processes behind simplification will allow us to improve the present-day Chinese characters.