McCrink Koleen, Wynn Karen
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2009 Aug;103(4):400-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2009.01.013. Epub 2009 Mar 13.
Recent studies on nonsymbolic arithmetic have illustrated that under conditions that prevent exact calculation, adults display a systematic tendency to overestimate the answers to addition problems and underestimate the answers to subtraction problems. It has been suggested that this operational momentum results from exposure to a culture-specific practice of representing numbers spatially; alternatively, the mind may represent numbers in spatial terms from early in development. In the current study, we asked whether operational momentum is present during infancy, prior to exposure to culture-specific representations of numbers. Infants (9-month-olds) were shown videos of events involving the addition or subtraction of objects with three different types of outcomes: numerically correct, too large, and too small. Infants looked significantly longer only at those incorrect outcomes that violated the momentum of the arithmetic operation (i.e., at too-large outcomes in subtraction events and too-small outcomes in addition events). The presence of operational momentum during infancy indicates developmental continuity in the underlying mechanisms used when operating over numerical representations.
最近关于非符号算术的研究表明，在无法进行精确计算的条件下，成年人表现出一种系统性倾向：高估加法问题的答案，低估减法问题的答案。有人认为，这种运算动量源于接触一种特定文化中用空间方式表示数字的做法；或者，大脑可能从发育早期就用空间方式表示数字。在本研究中，我们探讨了在接触特定文化的数字表示之前，婴儿期是否存在运算动量。我们向婴儿（9个月大）展示了涉及物体加减法的事件视频，这些事件有三种不同类型的结果：数字正确、过大和过小。婴儿仅对那些违反算术运算动量的错误结果（即减法事件中过大的结果和加法事件中过小的结果）注视的时间明显更长。婴儿期存在运算动量表明在对数字表征进行运算时所使用的潜在机制具有发育连续性。
