"On the money" - Monetary and numerical judgments of currency

Numerical and monetary judgments of currency were examined using two tasks-a monetary value task (which coin has a higher monetary value), and a numerical value task (which coin has a higher numerical value). In Experiment 1 participants were presented with pictures of coins of the Israeli currency. The Israeli currency is the shekel, which is composed of 100 agorot (equivalent to a dollar composed of 100 cents). Higher discriminability between shekels compared to agorot due to importance in everyday life was reflected in faster monetary comparisons of shekel pairs compared to agorot pairs. Automatic processing of numerical value was demonstrated for monetary judgments. When presented with pairs composed of one coin from each monetary category, responses were faster to pairs that were monetary-numerical congruent (e.g., 10 shekels vs. 5 agorot) compared to incongruent (e.g., 5 shekels vs. 10 agorot). Numerical value judgments were unaffected by such congruency. There was evidence for the automatic activation of physical size mainly in the numerical task. A similar picture was obtained in Experiment 2 where instead of pictures of coins we used verbal descriptions of currency, demonstrating the generality of our results.