McCrink Koleen, Wynn Karen
Yale University, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2007 Aug;18(8):740-5. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01969.x.
Human infants appear to be capable of the rudimentary mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, and ordering. To determine whether infants are capable of extracting ratios, we presented 6-month-old infants with multiple examples of a single ratio. After repeated presentations of this ratio, the infants were presented with new examples of a new ratio, as well as new examples of the previously habituated ratio. Infants were able to successfully discriminate two ratios that differed by a factor of 2, but failed to detect the difference between two numerical ratios that differed by a factor of 1.5. We conclude that infants can extract a common ratio across test scenes and use this information while examining new displays. The results support an approximate magnitude-estimation system, which has also been found in animals and human adults.
人类婴儿似乎能够进行加法、减法和排序等基本数学运算。为了确定婴儿是否能够提取比例，我们向6个月大的婴儿展示了单一比例的多个示例。在反复呈现这个比例之后，我们向婴儿展示了新比例的新示例，以及之前习惯化比例的新示例。婴儿能够成功区分相差2倍的两个比例，但未能检测出相差1.5倍的两个数字比例之间的差异。我们得出结论，婴儿可以在不同测试场景中提取共同比例，并在检查新显示时使用这些信息。这些结果支持了一种近似数量估计系统，该系统在动物和成年人类中也已被发现。
