Rules of order: Evidence for a novel influence on ordinal processing of numbers.

Research on how people process numerical order carries implications for our theoretical understanding of what a number means and our practical understanding of the foundation upon which more sophisticated mathematics is built. Current thinking posits that ordinal processing of numbers is linked to repeated practice with the integer count list, but the mechanisms underlying this link remain unclear. For instance, in standard ordinal verification paradigms, participants more rapidly and accurately verify that count-list sequences (e.g., 3-4-5) are "in-order" than non-count-list sequences (e.g., 2-4-6), although it remains unclear whether this is due to strong count-list processing or poor non-count-list processing. If the count list primarily