Neonates and animals attend to left and right space when seeing few or many dots, respectively. This phenomenon is also known as spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect. A biological hypothesis proposed that spatial–numerical associations depend on the brain’s asymmetric frequency tuning with visual properties (Felisatti et al., 2020). Does the visual representation of dots alone activate spatial mapping without conceptual number representation? Two groups of Chinese adults separately completed an explicit and an implicit task. In the explicit task, 33 participants distinguished between 'few' dots or 'many' dots, using 'left' and 'right' labeled keys. In the implicit task, 34 participants distinguished 'clear' from 'not clear' patterns using the 'D' and 'K' keys, thereby avoiding activation of number and space concepts. Classification speed was analyzed. Both tasks revealed SNARC, suggesting that visual numerosities alone activate spatial-numerical associations. SNARC was reversed, perhaps reflecting strong right-anchoring of cultural practices in Chinese (e.g., counting: Shaki & Fischer, 2023).

Reference
Felisatti, A., Laubrock, J., Shaki, S., & Fischer, M. H. (2020). A biological foundation for spatial–numerical associations: The brain’s asymmetric frequency tuning. Annals of the New York Academy
of Sciences, 1477(1), 44–53.
Shaki, S., & Fischer, M. H. (2023). How do numbers shift spatial attention? Both processing depth and counting habits matter. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001493