Jordan Kerry E, Brannon Elizabeth M
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2006 Nov;95(3):215-29. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2006.05.004. Epub 2006 Jun 30.
This study compared nonverbal numerical processing in 6-year-olds with that in nonhuman animals using a numerical bisection task. In the study, 16 children were trained on a delayed match-to-sample paradigm to match exemplars of two anchor numerosities. Children were then required to indicate whether a sample intermediate to the anchor values was closer to the small anchor value or the large anchor value. For two sets of anchor values with the same ratio, the probability of choosing the larger anchor value increased systematically with sample number, and the psychometric functions superimposed when plotted on a logarithmic scale. The psychometric functions produced by the children also superimposed with the psychometric functions produced by rhesus monkeys in an analogous previous experiment. These examples of superimposition demonstrate that nonverbal number representations, even in children who have acquired the verbal counting system, are modulated by Weber's law.
本研究使用数字二等分任务，比较了6岁儿童与非人类动物的非语言数字处理能力。在该研究中，16名儿童接受了延迟匹配样本范式的训练，以匹配两个锚定数字的示例。然后要求儿童指出介于锚定数值之间的样本更接近小锚定数值还是大锚定数值。对于两组具有相同比例的锚定数值，选择较大锚定数值的概率随着样本数量的增加而系统地增加，并且当以对数尺度绘制时，心理测量函数会叠加。儿童产生的心理测量函数也与之前类似实验中恒河猴产生的心理测量函数叠加。这些叠加的例子表明，即使在已经掌握了语言计数系统的儿童中，非语言数字表征也受韦伯定律的调节。
