Slusser Emily, Barth Hilary
Department of Child and Adolescent Development, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA.
Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06457, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2017 Oct;162:181-198. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.010. Epub 2017 Jun 10.
How children's understanding of numerical magnitudes changes over the course of development remains a key question in the study of numerical cognition. In an ongoing debate about the source of developmental change, some argue that children maintain and access different mental representations of number, with evidence coming largely from common number-line estimation tasks. In contrast, others argue that a theoretical framework based on psychophysical models of proportion estimation accounts for typical performance on these tasks. The current study explored children's (n=71) and adults' (n=27) performance on two number-line tasks: the "number to position" (or NP) task and the inverse "position to number" (or PN) task. Estimates on both tasks are consistent with the predictions of the proportion estimation account and do not support the hypothesis that a fundamental shift in mental representations underlies developmental change in numerical estimation and, in turn, mathematical ability. Converging evidence across the tasks also calls into question the utility of bounded number-line tasks as an evaluation of mental representations of number.
儿童对数字大小的理解在发展过程中如何变化，仍然是数字认知研究中的一个关键问题。在一场关于发展变化根源的持续争论中，一些人认为儿童保持并使用不同的数字心理表征，其证据主要来自常见的数字线估计任务。相比之下，另一些人则认为，基于比例估计心理物理模型的理论框架可以解释这些任务中的典型表现。当前的研究探讨了儿童（n = 71）和成人（n = 27）在两项数字线任务上的表现：“数字到位置”（或NP）任务和反向的“位置到数字”（或PN）任务。两项任务的估计结果都与比例估计理论的预测一致，并不支持这样的假设，即心理表征的根本转变是数字估计发展变化的基础，进而也是数学能力发展变化的基础。跨任务的趋同证据也对有界数字线任务作为数字心理表征评估工具的效用提出了质疑。
