Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2011 Jun;18(3):557-63. doi: 10.3758/s13423-011-0081-1.
Although the development of number-line estimation ability is well documented, little is known of the processes underlying successful estimators' mappings of numerical information onto spatial representations during these tasks. We tracked adults' eye movements during a number-line estimation task to investigate the processes underlying number-to-space translation, with three main results. First, eye movements were strongly related to the target number's location, and early processing measures directly predicted later estimation performance. Second, fixations and estimates were influenced by the size of the first number presented, indicating that adults calibrate their estimates online. Third, adults' number-line estimates demonstrated patterns of error consistent with the predictions of psychophysical models of proportion estimation, and eye movement data predicted the specific error patterns we observed. These results support proportion-based accounts of number-line estimation and suggest that adults' translation of numerical information into spatial representations is a rapid, online process.
尽管数字线估计能力的发展已有充分的记录，但对于在这些任务中成功的估计者将数值信息映射到空间表示的过程知之甚少。我们在数字线估计任务中跟踪成年人的眼动，以研究数字到空间转换的背后过程，主要有三个结果。首先，眼动与目标数字的位置密切相关，早期处理指标直接预测后期的估计表现。其次，注视和估计受到呈现的第一个数字大小的影响，表明成年人在线校准他们的估计。第三，成年人的数字线估计表现出与比例估计心理物理模型预测一致的误差模式，眼动数据预测了我们观察到的特定误差模式。这些结果支持了数字线估计的比例基础解释，并表明成年人将数值信息转换为空间表示是一个快速、在线的过程。
