Departamento de Psicología Básica, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Teatinos s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2012 Apr;19(2):294-300. doi: 10.3758/s13423-011-0212-8.
Numerical quantity seems to affect the response in any task that involves numbers, even in tasks that do not demand access to quantity (e.g., perceptual tasks). That is, readers seem to activate quantity representations upon the mere presentation of integers. One important piece of evidence in favor of this view comes from the finding of a distance effect in perceptual tasks: When one compares two numbers, response times (RTs) are a function of the numerical distance between them. However, recent studies have suggested that the physical similarity between Arabic numbers is strongly correlated with their numerical distance, and that the former could be a better predictor of RT data in perceptual tasks in which magnitude processing is not required (Cohen, 2009a). The present study explored the Persian and Arabic versions of Indian numbers (Exps. 1 and 2, respectively). Naïve participants (speakers of Spanish) and users of these notations (Pakistanis and Jordanians) participated in a physical same-different matching task. The RTs of users of the Indian notations were regressed on perceptual similarity (estimated from the Spanish participants' RTs) and numerical distance. The results showed that, regardless of the degree of correlation between the perceptual similarity function and the numerical distance function, the critical predictor for RTs was perceptual similarity. Thus, participants do not automatically activate Indian integers' quantity representations, at least not when these numbers are presented in simple perceptual tasks.
数量似乎会影响任何涉及数字的任务的反应，即使这些任务不需要涉及数量（例如感知任务）。也就是说，即使整数只是被呈现出来，读者似乎也会激活数量表示。支持这种观点的一个重要证据来自于感知任务中的距离效应的发现：当比较两个数字时，反应时间（RT）是它们之间数值距离的函数。然而，最近的研究表明，阿拉伯数字之间的物理相似性与它们的数值距离密切相关，而前者可能是不需要数量处理的感知任务中 RT 数据的更好预测指标（Cohen，2009a）。本研究分别使用波斯语和阿拉伯语版本的印度数字（实验 1 和实验 2）进行了探索。母语为西班牙语的被试和这些符号的使用者（巴基斯坦人和约旦人）参与了物理相同-不同匹配任务。印度符号使用者的 RT 被回归到感知相似性（根据西班牙参与者的 RT 估计）和数值距离上。结果表明，无论感知相似性函数和数值距离函数之间的相关程度如何，RT 的关键预测指标都是感知相似性。因此，参与者不会自动激活印度数字的数量表示，至少在这些数字出现在简单的感知任务中时不会。
