Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom.
Cortex. 2013 May;49(5):1435-40. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.12.018. Epub 2013 Jan 17.
In numerical cognition vision has been assumed to play a predominant role in the elaboration of the numerical representations and skills. However, this view has been recently challenged by the discovery that people with early visual deprivation not only have a semantic numerical representation that shares the same spatial properties with that in sighted people, but also have better numerical estimation skills. Here, we show that blind people's superior numerical abilities can be found in different numerical contexts, whether they are familiar or more general. In particular, we found that blind participants demonstrated better numerical estimation abilities than sighted participants in both an ecologic footstep and an unfamiliar oral verbal production task. Blind participants also tend to show greater working memory skills compared to sighted participants. These findings support the notion that vision is not necessary in the development of numerical cognition and indicate that early visual deprivation may even lead to a general enhancement in numerical estimation abilities. Moreover, they further suggest that blind people's greater numerical skills might be accounted by enhanced high-level cognitive processes, such as working memory.
在数值认知中，视觉被认为在数字表示和技能的发展中起着主要作用。然而，最近的发现挑战了这一观点，即早期视觉剥夺的人不仅具有与视力正常者相同的空间属性的语义数值表示，而且具有更好的数值估计技能。在这里，我们表明，盲人的优越的数字能力可以在不同的数字环境中找到，无论它们是熟悉的还是更一般的。特别是，我们发现，盲人参与者在生态足迹和不熟悉的口头言语产生任务中表现出比视力正常的参与者更好的数字估计能力。盲人参与者也倾向于表现出比视力正常的参与者更高的工作记忆技能。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即视觉在数字认知的发展中不是必需的，并且表明早期的视觉剥夺甚至可能导致数值估计能力的普遍提高。此外，它们进一步表明，盲人更好的数字技能可能是由于增强的高级认知过程，如工作记忆。
