Wood Justin N, Spelke Elizabeth S
Laboratory for Development Studies, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Dev Sci. 2005 Mar;8(2):173-81. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00404.x.
Are abstract representations of number - representations that are independent of the particular type of entities that are enumerated - a product of human language or culture, or do they trace back to human infancy? To address this question, four experiments investigated whether human infants discriminate between sequences of actions (jumps of a puppet) on the basis of numerosity. At 6 months, infants successfully discriminated four- versus eight-jump sequences, when the continuous variables of sequence duration, jump duration, jump rate, jump interval and duration, and extent of motion were controlled, and rhythm was eliminated. In contrast, infants failed to discriminate two- versus four-jump sequences, suggesting that infants fail to form cardinal number representations of small numbers of actions. Infants also failed to discriminate between sequences of four versus six jumps at 6 months, and succeeded at 9 months, suggesting that infants' number representations are imprecise and increase in precision with age. All of these findings agree with those of studies using visual-spatial arrays and auditory sequences, providing evidence that a single, abstract system of number representation is present and functional in infancy.
数字的抽象表征——即独立于被计数实体特定类型的表征——是人类语言或文化的产物，还是可以追溯到人类婴儿期呢？为了解决这个问题，四项实验研究了人类婴儿是否能根据数量来区分动作序列（木偶跳跃）。6个月大时，当序列持续时间、跳跃持续时间、跳跃速率、跳跃间隔和持续时间以及运动范围等连续变量得到控制且节奏被消除时，婴儿成功区分了4次跳跃和8次跳跃的序列。相比之下，婴儿未能区分2次跳跃和4次跳跃的序列，这表明婴儿无法形成少量动作的基数表征。6个月大的婴儿也未能区分4次跳跃和6次跳跃的序列，而9个月大时成功区分了，这表明婴儿的数字表征不准确，且随着年龄增长准确性会提高。所有这些发现都与使用视觉空间阵列和听觉序列的研究结果一致，证明在婴儿期存在一个单一的、抽象的数字表征系统并发挥着作用。
