Sweeny Timothy D, Wurnitsch Nicole, Gopnik Alison, Whitney David
Department of Psychology, University of Denver, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of California - Berkeley, USA.
Dev Sci. 2015 Jul;18(4):556-68. doi: 10.1111/desc.12239. Epub 2014 Nov 28.
Groups of objects are nearly everywhere we look. Adults can perceive and understand the 'gist' of multiple objects at once, engaging ensemble-coding mechanisms that summarize a group's overall appearance. Are these group-perception mechanisms in place early in childhood? Here, we provide the first evidence that 4-5-year-old children use ensemble coding to perceive the average size of a group of objects. Children viewed a pair of trees, with each containing a group of differently sized oranges. We found that, in order to determine which tree had the larger oranges overall, children integrated the sizes of multiple oranges into ensemble representations. This pooling occurred rapidly, and it occurred despite conflicting information from numerosity, continuous extent, density, and contrast. An ideal observer analysis showed that although children's integration mechanisms are sensitive, they are not yet as efficient as adults'. Overall, our results provide a new insight into the way children see and understand the environment, and they illustrate the fundamental nature of ensemble coding in visual perception.
几乎在我们目光所及之处都能看到成群的物体。成年人能够同时感知并理解多个物体的“要点”，运用整体编码机制来概括一组物体的整体外观。这些群体感知机制在儿童早期就存在吗？在此，我们提供了首个证据，证明4至5岁的儿童会使用整体编码来感知一组物体的平均大小。儿童观看一对树木，每棵树上都有一组大小各异的橙子。我们发现，为了确定哪棵树上的橙子总体上更大，儿童会将多个橙子的大小整合为整体表征。这种整合迅速发生，尽管存在来自数量、连续范围、密度和对比度的相互冲突的信息。理想观察者分析表明，虽然儿童的整合机制很灵敏，但还不如成年人高效。总体而言，我们的研究结果为儿童看待和理解环境的方式提供了新的见解，并且阐明了视觉感知中整体编码的基本性质。
