Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC, 28403-5612, USA.
University of York, York, UK.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2018 Feb;25(1):447-454. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1290-z.
The bounded number-line task has been used extensively to assess the numerical competence of both children and adults. One consistent finding has been that young children display a logarithmic response function, whereas older children and adults display a more linear response function. Traditionally, these log-linear functions have been interpreted as providing a transparent window onto the nature of the participants' psychological representations of quantity (termed here a direct response strategy). Here we show that the direct response strategy produces the log-linear response function regardless of whether the psychological representation of quantity is compressive or expansive. Simply put, the log-linear response function results from task constraints rather than from the psychological representation of quantities. We also demonstrate that a proportion/subtraction response strategy produces response patterns that almost perfectly correlate with the psychological representation of quantity. We therefore urge researchers not to interpret the log-linear response pattern in terms of numerical representation.
边界线数量任务已被广泛用于评估儿童和成人的数值能力。一个一致的发现是，年幼的儿童表现出对数响应函数，而年龄较大的儿童和成人则表现出更线性的响应函数。传统上，这些对数-线性函数被解释为提供了一个透明的窗口，了解参与者对数量的心理表示的性质（在这里称为直接响应策略）。在这里，我们表明，无论数量的心理表示是压缩的还是扩展的，直接响应策略都会产生对数线性响应函数。简单地说，对数线性响应函数是由任务约束而不是数量的心理表示产生的。我们还证明，比例/减法响应策略产生的响应模式与数量的心理表示几乎完全相关。因此，我们敦促研究人员不要根据数量表示来解释对数线性响应模式。
