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Ordinality judgment on number and letter sequences yields reverse distance effects and correlates with academic achievement

The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology / The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, (P)1226-9654; (E)2733-466X
2018, v.30 no.3, pp.293-299
https://doi.org/10.22172/cogbio.2018.30.3.008


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Abstract

The present study examined whether a reverse distance effect (RDE) is consistently observed for ordinality judgment using numbers, Korean letters and the alphabet. RDE refers to a phenomenon in which better performance is observed for judgment on stimuli that are closer to each other. We examined whether performance on these tasks are correlated with academic achievement in math, Korean and English domains. Indeed, RDEs were observed from all three tasks. This result reveals that the order of numbers and letters are similarly processed and is consistent with the results of previous studies reporting RDE. Performance was better for order judgment of numbers compared to Korean letters, and for Korean letters compared to the alphabet. This reveals that ordinality judgment of letters are less efficient compared to numbers and that ordinality judgment in the native language is more efficient compared to a foreign language. Linear regression analysis revealed that ordinality judgment performance using numbers and Korean letters significantly predicted math achievement. All three ordinality judgment performance predicted achievement in Korean and English domains. These results suggest that ordinality judgment of numbers and letters is related to achievement in not only math but also language. The present study is the first to examine the relationship between ordinality judgment performance and language achievement. We hereby propose that ordinal representations may be more domain-general than previously conceived, going beyond their presupposed numerical nature.

keywords
순서 표상, 역 거리 효과, 수학 성취도, 학업 성취도, 언어 성취도, ordinality, reverse distance effect, math achievement, academic achievement, language achievement

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The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology