Running head: numbers and space THE TEMPORARY NATURE OF NUMBER-SPACE INTERACTIONS

It is commonly accepted that the mental representation and processing of number and of space are tightly linked. This is evident from studies showing relations between math ability and visuospatial skill. Also, math instruction and education rely strongly on visuospatial tools and strategies. The dominant explanation for these number-space interactions is that the mental representation of numbers takes the form of a mental number line with numbers positioned in ascending order according to our reading habits. A long-standing debate is whether the link between numbers and space can be considered as evidence for a spatial number representation in long-term semantic memory, or whether this spatial frame is a temporary representation that emerges in working memory (WM) during task execution. Here we give an overview of our recent work that indicates that basic number processing tasks do not operate on a long-term spatial memory representation, but on a representation constructed in serial order WM, where the elements are spatially coded as a function of their ordinal position in the memorized sequence. Implications for a new theoretical framework linking serial order WM and basic number processing are discussed.