van Dijck Jean-Philippe, Abrahamse Elger L, Acar Freya, Ketels Boris, Fias Wim
a Department of Experimental Psychology , University of Ghent , Ghent , Belgium.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2014;67(8):1500-13. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2014.903984. Epub 2014 Apr 22.
Rather than reflecting the long-term memory construct of a mental number line, it has been proposed that the relation between numbers and space is of a more temporary nature and constructed in working memory during task execution. In three experiments we further explored the viability of this working memory account. Participants performed a speeded dot detection task with dots appearing left or right, while maintaining digits or letters in working memory. Just before presentation of the dot, these digits or letters were used as central cues. These experiments show that the "attentional SNARC-effect" (where SNARC is the spatial-numerical association of response codes) is not observed when only the lastly perceived number cue--and no serially ordered sequence of cues--is maintained in working memory (Experiment 1). It is only when multiple items (numbers in Experiment 2; letters in Experiment 3) are stored in working memory in a serially organized way that the attentional cueing effect is observed as a function of serial working memory position. These observations suggest that the "attentional SNARC-effect" is strongly working memory based. Implications for theories on the mental representation of numbers are discussed.
有人提出，数字与空间之间的关系并非反映心理数字线的长期记忆结构，而是具有更临时的性质，是在任务执行过程中于工作记忆中构建的。在三个实验中，我们进一步探讨了这种工作记忆解释的可行性。参与者执行一项快速点检测任务，点出现在左侧或右侧，同时在工作记忆中保持数字或字母。就在点出现之前，这些数字或字母被用作中心线索。这些实验表明，当工作记忆中仅保留最后感知到的数字线索（而没有连续排序的线索序列）时，不会观察到“注意SNARC效应”（其中SNARC是反应编码的空间数字关联）（实验1）。只有当多个项目（实验2中的数字；实验3中的字母）以连续组织的方式存储在工作记忆中时，才会观察到作为连续工作记忆位置函数的注意线索效应。这些观察结果表明，“注意SNARC效应”强烈基于工作记忆。文中讨论了这些结果对数字心理表征理论的启示。
