Selective bias in temporal bisection task by number exposition

Temporal experience can be modulated by a number of environmental factors such as quantity. Here I show that merely looking at numbers causes a bias in imaginative (but not perceptual) time bisection task that depends on the number’s magnitude. This suggests that automatic shifts of spatial attention to the left and right side, as a result of exposure to numbers, modulates temporal as well as spatial behaviour (2,3,4). This finding suggests that the representation of time and space produce certain patterns in neural maps that are decoded by means of the similar neural mechanisms. The line “bisection task ” is a sensitive test for attentional and motor biases in both healthy and brain damaged subjects (1). In healthy subjects, performance is strongly influenced by intrinsic perceptual features of stimulus like quantities: when a line is composed of digits, or words (2, 9; or two, nine), pointing deviates leftwards or rightwards from the midpoint (2,3). It seems that numbers automatically bias attention to the left or the right, and consequently, that the bisection of the lines deviates in the same direction. This hypothesis fits with the Fischer study (4) in which it is suggested that merely looking at numbers determines a shift of attention in space. The results from this study showed that right targets were detected faster when preceded by a large digit (8 or 9), whereas left targets were detected faster when preceded by a low digit (1 or 2). Recent neuroimaging studies of numerical cognition in humans, and physiological studies of spatial cogni