Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Missionsstrasse 62, 4055, Basel, Switzerland.
Psychol Res. 2019 Jul;83(5):885-893. doi: 10.1007/s00426-017-0904-4. Epub 2017 Aug 10.
The current study investigated whether children's mental representations of numbers are organized spatially at the onset of formal schooling using a manual-pointing task. First-graders (N = 77) saw four numbers (1, 3, 7, 9) presented randomly in four spatial positions (extreme left, left, right, extreme right) on a touch screen. In a Go/No-Go task, children were asked to press the appearing numbers as fast and accurately as possible, but only when the numbers were "smaller" (or "larger" in a different block) than 5. Results indicated that response times were significantly affected by the spatial position in which the different numbers were presented. Response times for small numbers (1 and 3) increased and response times for large numbers (7 and 9) decreased, the more they were presented towards the right side of the screen. These findings suggested that first-graders spontaneously employed a spatial number representation that was oriented from left to right. Furthermore, this left-to-right organization could not be easily changed by priming a different direction. Our findings indicate that even young children map numbers continuously onto space.
本研究采用手动指向任务，考察了儿童在正式入学初期是否会将数字的心理表象空间组织起来。首先，一年级学生（N=77）在触摸屏上看到四个数字（1、3、7、9）随机出现在四个空间位置（最左边、左边、右边、最右边）。在 Go/No-Go 任务中，要求孩子们尽快、尽可能准确地按出现的数字，但是只有当数字小于 5 时（在另一个块中为“大于”）才可以按。结果表明，不同数字呈现的空间位置对反应时间有显著影响。小数字（1 和 3）的反应时间增加，大数字（7 和 9）的反应时间减少，它们在屏幕的右侧呈现的次数越多。这些发现表明，一年级学生自发地采用了从左到右的空间数字表示法。此外，这种从左到右的组织不能通过启动不同的方向轻易改变。我们的发现表明，即使是年幼的儿童也会将数字连续映射到空间上。
