In 2011, van Dijck and Fias described a positional SNARC effect: the SPoARC. To-be-remembered items presented centrally on a screen seemed to acquire a left-to-right spatial dimension. If confirmed, this spatialization could be crucial for immediate memory theories. However, given the intricate links between visual and spatial dimensions, this effect could be due to the visual presentation, which could have probed the left-to-right direction of reading/writing. To allow a generalization of this effect, we adapted van Dijck and Fias's task using (...) an auditory version of Sternberg's paradigm. Lists of five consonants were auditorily presented at a rate of 3 s/item. A SPoARC effect was observed. The consequences are discussed first from an immediate memory perspective, putting forward the view that order could be coded through spatialization, and then in terms of similarities between SPoARC and SNARC. (shrink)

In this commentary, we discuss an important pattern of results in the literature on the neural basis of expertise: decrease of cerebral activation at the beginning of acquisition of expertise and functional cerebral reorganization as a consequence of years of practice. We show how these two results can be integrated with the neural reuse framework.