Cognitive and Neurophysiological Bases of Monetary Processing

Abstract

The main aim of the studies reported in this thesis is to investigate how prices are processed, whether they are represented holistically, compositionally or in a hybrid manner. With this purpose, we carried out our four studies (Chapters V to VIII) where the compatibility effect was examined in price pair-comparison tasks. We aimed to identify the conditions in which this effect is observed. In these studies, comparisons between one-digit prices (Chapters V and VI) and two-digit prices (Chapters VII and VIII) were explored. In all of them, the compatibility effect was evaluated through behavioural measures, and in two of these studies, the compatibility effect was also examined by recording electrophysiological activity (Chapters VI and VIII). In addition, we report an additional study (Chapter IX) in which we investigated whether physical dimensions, such as size or colour, influence the processing of the monetary value of banknotes.