Supplementary material from "One and only SNARC? Spatial-Numerical Associations are not fully flexible and depend on both relative and absolute number magnitude "

Numbers are associated with space, but it is unclear how flexible these associations are. We investigated whether the SNARC effect (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes; Dehaene et al., 1993; i.e., faster responses to small/large number magnitude with the left/right hand, respectively) is fully flexible (depending only on relative magnitude within a stimulus set), or not (depending on absolute magnitude as well). Evidence for relative-magnitude dependency came from studies observing that numbers 4 and 5 were associated with the right in a 0 – 5 range but with the left in a 4 – 9 range (Dehaene et al., 1993; Fias et al., 1996). Within this Registered Report, we conducted two online experiments running Bayesian analyses with optional recruitment stopping at moderate evidence (BF10 above 3 or below 1/3). Experiment 1 (N = 200) replicated relative-magnitude dependency using the original stimuli. However, Experiment 2 (N = 300) additionally demonstrated absolute-magnitude dependency, while considering recent advances in SNARC research using 1 – 5 excluding 3 and 4 – 8 excluding 6. In contrast to the frequently perpetuated notion of fully flexible spatial-numerical associations, some fixed relation to absolute magnitude prevails. These findings have important consequences for understanding how spatial-numerical associations might support numerical processing.