Liczby a przestrzeń, czyli o efekcie SNARC. Krzysztof Cipora | Umysł matematyczny #2

How does the mind process numbers? Is there an innate "number sense"? Does each of us have a mental number line, with small numbers on the left and large numbers on the right? What does the so-called SNARC effect reveal about mathematical cognition? Dr. Krzysztof Cipora, professor at the Jagiellonian University, addresses these questions, among others, in this mini-lecture. The SNARC effect is a phenomenon in which our mind automatically connects numbers to space. It turns out that we respond faster to small numbers on the left side (e.g., with the left hand) and to large numbers on the right—even when the task doesn't involve size at all, but rather, for example, whether a number is even. This suggests that we think of numbers as if they were arranged on a "mental number line," similar to the number lines we know from graphs. Is this association of small numbers with the left side and large numbers with the right side a universal feature of the human (and not just human!) mind? Research shows that the SNARC effect occurs only in some people and can change over time. Moreover, its direction depends on the culture and the direction of the journal. Dr. Krzysztof Cipora, a professor at the Jagiellonian University, is a researcher at the Copernicus Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and co-director of the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Lab at the Jagiellonian University (https://mcll.uj.edu.pl). He earned his doctorate from the Jagiellonian University in 2016. From 2016 to 2020, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tübingen (Germany), and then (2020-25) as a lecturer and senior lecturer (equivalent to Assistant and Associate Professor) at Loughborough University (UK). Together with colleagues at the MCLL, he is currently researching the psychological mechanisms of number processing in mathematicians, mathematics anxiety, and how the culture in which we live influences how we process numbers. Author of dozens of scientific articles in journals such as Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Sciences, Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Royal Society Open Science, Journal of Neuroscience Research, Behavior Research Methods, Acta Psychologica, and Psychological Research. Co-editor of the International Handbook of Mathematical Cognition (Routledge, 2026). Funded by the Ministry of Education and Science under the Social Responsibility of Science program as part of the project "I'd Rather Not Know. Around the Thoughts of Michał Heller." Support the Copernicus channel:    / @copernicuscenter   https://patronite.pl/copernicus