Mattys Sven L, Baddeley Alan, Trenkic Danijela
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
Department of Education, University of York, York, UK.
Mem Cognit. 2018 Apr;46(3):361-369. doi: 10.3758/s13421-017-0770-8.
It is well established that digit span in native Chinese speakers is atypically high. This is commonly attributed to a capacity for more rapid subvocal rehearsal for that group. We explored this hypothesis by testing a group of English-speaking native Mandarin speakers on digit span and word span in both Mandarin and English, together with a measure of speed of articulation for each. When compared to the performance of native English speakers, the Mandarin group proved to be superior on both digit and word spans while predictably having lower spans in English. This suggests that the Mandarin advantage is not limited to digits. Speed of rehearsal correlated with span performance across materials. However, this correlation was more pronounced for English speakers than for any of the Chinese measures. Further analysis suggested that speed of rehearsal did not provide an adequate account of differences between Mandarin and English spans or for the advantage of digits over words. Possible alternative explanations are discussed.
众所周知，以汉语为母语者的数字广度异常高。这通常归因于该群体更快速的默读复述能力。我们通过对一组以英语为母语的普通话使用者进行普通话和英语的数字广度及单词广度测试，并测量每个人的发音速度，来探究这一假设。与以英语为母语者的表现相比，普通话组在数字广度和单词广度上都更胜一筹，而不出所料地在英语方面广度较低。这表明普通话优势不仅限于数字。复述速度与不同材料的广度表现相关。然而，这种相关性在说英语者中比在任何汉语测量中都更明显。进一步分析表明，复述速度并不能充分解释普通话和英语广度之间的差异，也无法解释数字相对于单词的优势。文中讨论了可能的其他解释。
