Hans-Christoph Nuerk

• Dipl.-Psych., Dipl.-Math., Dr. rer.nat (Psychology), Dr.phil.habil. (Psychology)
• Professor (Full) at University of Tübingen

A domain/field of research can often benefit from a consensus. Agreement regarding terminology and tasks used to measure specific constructs may be particularly beneficial. Our group authored such a consensus paper on measuring the Approximate Number System in young children (Krajcsi et al., 2024). In preparing that paper, we followed the procedure...

A domain/field of research can often benefit from a consensus. Agreement regarding terminology and tasks used to measure specific constructs may be particularly beneficial. Our group authored such a consensus paper on measuring the Approximate Number System in young children (Krajcsi et al., 2024). In preparing that paper, we followed the procedure...

Mathematics anxiety influences not only math performance but also career choices, often leading individuals to avoid math-intensive fields in higher education. While much research has been devoted to that relation, other factors, such as general and test anxiety, neuroticism, and math-related attitudes (e.g., math self-concept and self-efficacy) ha...

Math self-concept and math anxiety are two critical psychological constructs influencing mathematical performance. Math self-concept reflects an individual's perception of their mathematical abilities, while math anxiety represents a negative emotional response to mathematical tasks. Although extensively studied in young adults and children, little...

La complexité d’un problème de mots est influencée par des processus linguistiques et arithmétiques. Toutefois, la question de savoir si ces processus sont séquentiels ou interactifs fait l’objet d’un débat. Il y a peu d’informations disponibles sur la manière dont les mouvements oculaires varient en fonction des différentes caractéristiques des tâ...

Purpose The potential influence of culture on functional lateralization was rarely investigated, yet it may be an important factor in our understanding of the human brain. In numerical processing, evidence was found for differential directional preferences of space–number associations in cultures with opposite reading direction systems. This may af...

Numbers are highly relevant in our everyday lives. Besides intentionally processing number magnitude when necessary, we often automatically process it even when not required. The SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes; Dehaene et al., 1993) effect, describing faster left-/right-sided responses to smaller/larger numbers, respectively...

Solving arithmetic word problems requires individuals to create a correct mental representation, and this involves both text processing and number processing. The latter comprises understanding the semantic meaning of numbers (i.e., their magnitudes) and potentially executing the appropriate mathematical operation. However, it is not yet clear whet...

Numbers are highly relevant in our everyday lives. Besides intentionally processing number magnitude when necessary, we often automatically process it even when not required. The SNARC (Spatial–Numerical Association of Response Codes; Dehaene et al., 1993) effect, describing faster left-/right-sided responses to smaller/larger numbers, respectively...

Many studies have demonstrated spatial-numerical associations, but the debate about their origin is still ongoing. Some approaches consider cardinality representations in long-term memory, such as a Mental Number Line, while others suggest ordinality representations, for both numerical and non-numerical stimuli, originating in working or long-term...

Solving arithmetic word problems requires individuals to create a correct mental representation, and this involves both text processing and number processing. The latter comprises understanding the semantic meaning of numbers (i.e., their magnitudes) and potentially executing the appropriate mathematical operation. However, it is not yet clear whet...

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 J. Exp. Psychol. 122, 371–396. (doi:10.1037/0096-3445.122.3.371); i.e. faster responses to small/large number magnitude with the left/right hand, res...

Nous présentons l’instrument de mesure Math4Speed (M4S), un test papier-crayon combinant les quatre opérations arithmétiques avec des items de complexité variable. Le test M4S comprend 50 problèmes d’addition, 50 problèmes de soustraction, 50 problèmes de multiplication et 50 problèmes de division, limités à 2 minutes par opération. L’évaluation ps...

Spatial-Numerical Associations (SNAs) refer to the demonstrations of spatial processing of numbers. The Mental Number Line (MNL) is a representation model describing numbers as aligning left-to-right (LR) and was suggested to account for directional biases in participants’ responses during numerical tasks. One common behavioral demonstration of thi...

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD) have a huge impact on patients, caregivers, and the health care system. Until now, diagnosis of mild cognitive impairments in PD has been established based on domain‐general functions such as executive functions, attention, or working memory. However, specific numerical deficits observed i...

Introduction Despite having sufficient formal education, a large group of people cannot complete everyday tasks like reading, writing, or making basic calculations. Regarding reading, millions of people are not able to understand more complex texts despite the ability to read simple words or sentences; they have low literacy skills. Even though thi...

The potential influence of culture on functional lateralization is a rarely investigated topic, yet it may be an important factor in our understanding of the human brain. In numerical processing, evidence was found for differential directional preferences of space-number associations in cultures with opposite reading direction systems. This may aff...

Spatial-Numerical Associations (SNAs) refer to the demonstrations of spatial processing of numbers. The Mental Number Line (MNL) is a representation model describing numbers as aligning left-to-right (LR) was suggested to account for directional biases in participants’ responses during numerical tasks. One common behavioral demonstration of this is...

Spatial-Numerical Associations (SNAs) refer to the demonstrations of spatial processing of numbers. The Mental Number Line (MNL) is a representation model describing numbers as aligning left-to-right (LR) and was suggested to account for directional biases in participants’ responses during numerical tasks. One common behavioral demonstration of thi...

While general cognitive skills decline during aging, numerical skills seem to be mainly preserved. Such skills are essential for an independent life up to old age, e.g., when dealing with money or time. Operating with numbers usually requires number magnitude and place-value processing. The question is whether these processes are negatively affecte...

Although math anxiety has been extensively studied, its interplay with other emotional and attitude constructs is still unclear. The present dataset includes math anxiety and arithmetic performance alongside different types of anxiety (i.e., state, test, general anxiety and neuroticism) and attitudes towards math (i.e., math self-concept, math self...

Many studies have demonstrated spatial-numerical associations, but the debate about their origin is still ongoing. Some approaches consider cardinality representations in long-term memory, such as a Mental Number Line, while others suggest ordinality representations, for both numerical and non-numerical stimuli, originating in working or long-term...

A domain/field of research can often benefit from a consensus. Agreement regarding terminology and tasks used to measure specific constructs may be particularly beneficial. Our group authored such a consensus paper on measuring the Approximate Number System in young children (Krajcsi et al., 2024). In preparing that paper, we followed the procedure...

A domain/field of research can often benefit from a consensus. Agreement regarding terminology and tasks used to measure specific constructs may be particularly beneficial. Our group authored such a consensus paper on measuring the Approximate Number System in young children (Krajcsi et al., 2024). In preparing that paper, we followed the procedure...

Solving arithmetic word problems requires individuals to create a correct mental model, and this process involves both text processing and number processing. The latter involves selecting and executing the appropriate mathematical operation. However, it is not yet clear whether number processing is part of building the mental model, and whether it...

Two implicit generalizations are often made from group-level studies in cognitive experimental psychology and their common statistical analysis in the general linear model: (1) Group-level phenomena are assumed to be present in every participant with variations between participants being often treated as random error in data analyses; (2) phenomena...

Numbers are highly relevant in our everyday lives. Besides intentionally processing number magnitude when necessary, we often automatically process it even when not required. The SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes; Dehaene et al., 1993) effect, describing faster left-/right-sided responses to smaller/larger numbers, respectively...

Numbers are highly relevant in our everyday lives. Besides intentionally processing number magnitude when necessary, we often automatically process it even when not required. The SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes; Dehaene et al., 1993) effect, describing faster left-/right-sided responses to smaller/larger numbers, respectively...

Neuromodulation with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can transiently alter neural activity, but its spatial precision is low. High‐definition (HD) tDCS was introduced to increase spatial precision by placing additional electrodes over the scalp. Initial evaluations of HD tDCS indicated polarity‐specific neurophysiological effects—sim...

Previous studies suggest that theta burst stimulation (TBS), a form of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) might be a promising approach to modulate stress-reactive rumination and the associated psychophysiological stress response. Crucially, individuals showing higher leve...

The approximate number system (ANS) is a hypothesized mechanism responsible for the representation and processing of numerical information in an imprecise fashion. According to the predominant theory, the ANS is essential in solving simple numerical tasks such as comparing which of two quantities is numerically larger, and some research has indicat...

Magnitude information, for instance, regarding weight, distance, or velocity, is crucial for planning goal-directed interactions. Accordingly, magnitude information, including numerical magnitude, can affect actions: Responses to small numbers are faster with the left hand than the right and vice versa (hand-based SNARC effect). Previous experiment...

Functional lateralization was previously established for various cognitive domains—but not for number processing. Although numbers are considered to be bilaterally represented in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), there are some indications of different functional roles of the left vs. right IPS in processing number pairs with small vs. large distance...

Neuromodulation with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can transiently alter neural activity, but its spatial precision is low. High-definition (HD) tDCS was introduced to increase spatial precision by placing additional electrodes over the scalp. Initial evaluations of HD tDCS indicated polarity-specific neurophysiological effects --...

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlie processing in s...

The approximate number system (ANS) is a hypothesized mechanism responsible for the representation and processing of numerical information in an imprecise fashion. According to the predominant theory, the ANS is essential in solving simple numerical tasks such as comparing which of two quantities is numerically larger, and some research has indicat...

Numerical cognition might be embodied, that is, grounded in bodily actions. This claim is supported by the observation that, potentially due to our shared biology, finger counting is prevalent among a variety of cultures. Differences in finger counting are apparent even within Western cultures. Relatively few indigenous cultures have been systemati...

Functional lateralization was previously established for various cognitive domains – but not for number processing. Although numbers are considered to be bilaterally represented in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), there are some indications of different functional roles of the left vs. right IPS in processing number pairs with small vs. large distan...

In response to a point raised by Fischer et al. (2020), we discuss the theoretical implications of both the original Attentional SNARC (Att-SNARC) and its recent failed multi-laboratory replication. In our view, the theoretical importance of the original Att-SNARC can be summarized in two points: (1) there is a conceptual link between numbers and s...

Significant difficulties in reading comprehension, despite attendance of compulsory schooling, are a worldwide phenomenon. While previous research on adults with low literacy skills focused primarily on their reading ability, less is known about their oral language skills. In this Brief Research Report, we present an investigation of the listening...

Short- and long-wavelength light can alter pupillary responses differently, allowing inferences to be made about the contribution of different photoreceptors on pupillary constriction. In addition to classical retinal photoreceptors, the pupillary light response is formed by the activity of melanopsin-expressing intrinsically photosensitive retinal...

Two implicit generalizations are often made from group-level studies in cognitive experimental psychology and their common statistical analysis in the general linear model: (1) Group-level phenomena are assumed to be present in every participant with variations between participants being often treated as random error in data analyses; (2) phenomena...

This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and...

The role of grammar in numerical development, and particularly the role of grammatical number inflection, has already been well-documented in toddlerhood. It is unclear, however, whether the influence of grammatical language structure further extends to more complex later stages of numerical development. Here, we addressed this question by exploiti...

The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect – i.e., faster responses to small numbers with the left compared to the right side and to large numbers with the right compared to the left side – suggests that numbers are associated with space. However, it remains unclear whether the SNARC effect evolves from a number’s magnitude...

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlies processing in...

This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and...

This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and...

Background Self-regulation has frequently been shown to be context-sensitive, suggesting the influence of different cultural contexts on its development. However, up until now, self-regulation has been mainly studied in Western countries with similar cultural contexts.Objective Thus, with the present study we compared self-regulation of preschool c...

Objectives One-third of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) convert to dementia within a few years. Markers with a high prognostic value for dementia conversion are needed. Loss of everyday function primarily caused by cognitive dysfunction is the core criterion for the diagnosis of PD dementia, with an onset o...

While arithmetic training reduces fronto-temporo-parietal activation related to domain-general processes in typically developing (TD) children, we know very little about the training-related neurocognitive changes in children with mathematical disabilities (MD), who seek evidenced-based educational interventions. In a within-participant design, a g...

In everyday life, adults need to manipulate numbers in several ways. A large range of measures evaluating arithmetic fluency is currently used, differing in definitions and operationalizations of the underlying construct. The basic arithmetic operations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Here, we introduce an instrument fo...

The counting process can only be fully understood when taking into account the visual characteristics of the sets counted. Comparing behavioral data as well as event-related brain potentials (ERPs) evoked by different task-irrelevant arrangements of dots during an exact enumeration task, we aimed to investigate the effect of illusory contour detect...

Mathematics anxiety (MA) is negatively associated with mathematics performance. Although some aspects, such as mathematics self‐concept (M self‐concept), seem to modulate this association, the underlying mechanism is still unclear. In addition, the false gender stereotype that women are worse than men in mathematics can have a detrimental effect on...

Psychological science could greatly benefit from research synthesis, especially when it comes to overcoming limitations of too small samples tested in single studies. However, initiatives aimed at sharing large, curated trial-level data from cognitive tasks remain scarce. To address this problem, we initiated a collective effort allowing to assembl...

Despite variety of cultures, our shared biology and the universality of finger counting suggests that numbers are embodied. Another lines of research show that numerical cognition might be bound to what our bodies are able to do. Differences in finger counting are apparent even within Western cultures. Relatively few indigenous cultures have been s...

One of the most fundamental effects used to investigate number representations is the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect showing that responses to small/large numbers are faster with the left/right hand, respectively. However, in recent years, it is hotly debated whether the SNARC effect is based upon cardinal representa...

Teachers are strong role models for their pupils, especially at the beginning of education. This also holds true for math: If teachers feel anxious about math, the consequences on the mathematical education of their pupils is detrimental. Previous studies have shown that (future) elementary school teachers have higher levels of math anxiety than mo...

This study set out to examine the basic reading skills (accuracy and fluency in decoding, word and text reading) and some of the reading-related language skills (phonological awareness and rapid-naming) of 54 adults with low reading comprehension, who read the transparent German orthography. Participants were born in Germany and showed a typical no...

Mathematics anxiety (MA) is negatively associated with mathematics performance. Although some aspects, such as mathematics self-concept (M-self-concept), seem to modulate this association, the underlying mechanism is still unclear. In addition, the false gender-stereotype according to which women are worse than men in mathematics, can have a detrim...

The SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect (i.e., a tendency to associate small/large magnitude numbers with the left/right hand side) is prevalent across the whole lifespan. Because the ability to relate numbers to space has been viewed as a cornerstone in the development of mathematical skills, the relationship between the...

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD) have a huge impact on patients, caregivers, and the health‐care system. To date, the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairments in PD has been established based on domain‐general functions such as executive functions, attention, or working memory. However, specific numerical deficits observed...

Recent research has emphasized rumination as an important maintaining factor in various mental disorders. However, operationalization and therefore induction of rumination in experimental settings poses a major challenge in terms of ecological validity. As stress seems to play a key role in everyday situations eliciting rumination, we conducted two...

Research on dyscalculia in neurodegenerative diseases is still scarce, despite high impact on patients’ independence and activities of daily living function. Most studies address Alzheimer’s Disease; however, patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) also have a higher risk for cognitive impairment while the relation to arithmetic deficits in financia...

Research on multi-digit number processing suggests that, in Arabic numerals, their place-value magnitude is automatically activated, whenever a magnitude-relevant task was employed. However, so far, it is unknown, whether place-value is also activated when the target task is magnitude-irrelevant. The current study examines this question using the p...

Background: Reviews addressing numerical and arithmetic deficits in neurodegenerative dementias have been conducted about 20 years ago and mainly focus on Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Due to the overlap of neuronal areas and circuits involved in numerical cognition with areas degenerating in neurodegenerative dementias such as Parkinson’s Disease Deme...

The symbolic number comparison task has been widely used to investigate the cognitive representation and underlying processes of multi-digit number processing. The standard procedure to establish numerical distance and compatibility effects in such number comparison paradigms usually entails asking participants to indicate the larger of two present...

Both linguistic and arithmetic task characteristics contribute to the difficulty of a word problem. However, the role of these characteristics and the exact cognitive processes underlying arithmetic word problems are often not clear, but they might be detectable by analysing eye-movement patterns. Not much is known about how eye-movements change un...

Self-regulation is a multidimensional construct that is positively related to academic achievement, such as successful mathematics performance. However, this relation of self-regulation and mathematics performance has mainly been investigated in Western countries with similar cultural contexts, although self-regulation is assumed to be context-sens...

Children with developmental dyscalculia (DD) differ from typically developing (TD) children regarding brain activation. While arithmetic training reduces fronto-temporo-parietal activation related to domain-general processes in TD children, we do not know whether these findings also hold for children with DD. Since children with DD are one main tar...

Implicit associations can interfere with cognitive operations and behavioural decisions without direct intention. Enhancement of neural activity with anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was proposed to reduce implicit associations by means of improved cognitive control. However, the notion of a direct inhibition of implicit associ...

The role of grammar in numerical development, and particularly the role of grammatical number inflection, has already been well-documented in toddlerhood. It is unclear, however, whether the influence of grammatical language structure further extends to more complex later stages of numerical development. Here, we addressed this question by exploiti...

The symbolic number comparison task has been widely used to investigate the cognitive representation and underlying processes of multi-digit number processing. The standard procedure to establish numerical distance and compatibility effects in such number comparison paradigms usually entails asking participants to indicate the larger of two present...

Teachers are strong role models for their pupils, especially at the very beginning of education, and as such, pupils tend to share their teacher’s attitudes. This also holds true for math: If teachers feel anxious about math, the consequences on the mathematical education of their pupils is detrimental.Previous studies have shown that (future) elem...

Doing basic maths seems to be a pretty common thing. 2 + 2 equals 4, both in France and in China. 7 × 8 equals 56, both in the United States of America and in Germany. Although most of us use the same symbols to write down numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, …), we use very different words for these numbers simply because we speak different languages. In this art...

Numerous studies revealed effects of some linguistic properties like inversion or reading/writing direction on number processing. However, it remains more controversial, whether influences at a syntactic level, such as singular vs. plural form associated with certain numbers, can also influence magnitude and place-value processing and vice versa. I...

In response to a recent point raised by Fischer at al. (2020), we discuss the theoretical implications of both the original Attentional SNARC (Att-SNARC) and its recent failed multi-laboratory replication. In our view, the theoretical importance of the original Att-SNARC can be summarized in two points: (1) there is a conceptual link between number...

The numerical distance effect (it is easier to compare numbers that are further apart) and size effect (for a constant distance, it is easier to compare smaller numbers) characterize symbolic number processing. However, evidence for a relationship between these two basic phenomena and more complex mathematical skills is mixed. Previously this relat...

The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for...

Evidence from multiple studies conducted in the past few decades converges on the conclusion that numerical properties can be associated with specific directions in space. Such spatial–numerical associations (SNAs), as a signature of elementary number processing, seem to be a likely correlate of math skills. Nevertheless, almost three decades of re...

An important part of any math curriculum is solving word problems. Such problems are particularly difficult for many students. It has been shown that the difficulty of word problems arises from the characteristics of the problems themselves (e.g., arithmetic and linguistic characteristics) and the solver (e.g., mathematical and reading ability as w...

It is widely accepted that finger and number representations are associated: many correlations (including longitudinal ones) between finger gnosis/counting and numerical/arithmetical abilities have been reported. However, such correlations do not necessarily imply causal influence of early finger-number training; even in longitudinal designs, media...

Functional lateralization is established for various cognitive functions, but was hardly ever investigated for arithmetic processing. Most neurocognitive models assume a central role of the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) in arithmetic processing and there is some evidence for more pronounced left-hemispheric activation for symbolic arithmetic...

The numerical distance effect (it is easier to compare numbers that are further apart) and size effect (for a constant distance, it is easier to compare smaller numbers) characterize the analogue number magnitude representation. However, evidence for a relationship between these two basic phenomena and more complex mathematical skills is mixed. Pre...