The influence of semantics and numerical representation on the SNARC effect

World semantics refers to how individuals comprehend and ascribe meaning to phenomena within specific sociocultural and environmental contexts. And it significantly influences how people conceptualize numerical properties, such as quantity ("how many") and order ("which"), influencing their resolution of cardinal and ordinal numerical task. In order to reveal the influence of world semantics on the joint effects of encoding spatial-numerical responses related to cardinal and ordinal numbers, this study conducted three experimental contexts with distinct numerical representations: (1) a non-symbolic context, where numbers were represented using dot arrays; (2) a symbolic context, where numbers were presented as Chinese characters; and (3) a word problem solving context, where numerical values were embedded in real-world mathematical scenarios. To investigate how numerical attributes (cardinality vs. ordinality) influence on the SNARC effect under varying level of world semantics across these three contexts. Results showed that in the non-symbolic context, the SNARC effect is primarily observed for cardinal numbers. In the symbolic context, ordinal number elicited a stronger SNARC effect. However, in the word problem context, no significant SNARC effect was observed. The findings suggest that as world semantics become more prominent, the SNARC effect diminishes, particularly in applied numerical contexts. Additionally, ordinal numbers exhibited a stronger SNARC effect than cardinal numbers, supporting the role of sequential processing in spatial-numerical associations.