Krajcsi Attila, Kojouharova Petia
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Doctoral School of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 16;8:2013. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02013. eCollection 2017.
In a comparison task, the larger the distance between the two numbers to be compared, the better the performance-a phenomenon termed as the numerical distance effect. According to the dominant explanation, the distance effect is rooted in a noisy representation, and performance is proportional to the size of the overlap between the noisy representations of the two values. According to alternative explanations, the distance effect may be rooted in the association between the numbers and the small-large categories, and performance is better when the numbers show relatively high differences in their strength of association with the small-large properties. In everyday number use, the value of the numbers and the association between the numbers and the small-large categories strongly correlate; thus, the two explanations have the same predictions for the distance effect. To dissociate the two potential sources of the distance effect, in the present study, participants learned new artificial number digits only for the values between 1 and 3, and between 7 and 9, thus, leaving out the numbers between 4 and 6. It was found that the omitted number range (the distance between 3 and 7) was considered in the distance effect as 1, and not as 4, suggesting that the distance effect does not follow the values of the numbers predicted by the dominant explanation, but it follows the small-large property association predicted by the alternative explanations.
在一项比较任务中，待比较的两个数字之间的距离越大，表现就越好——这种现象被称为数值距离效应。根据主流解释，距离效应源于有噪声的表征，并且表现与两个值的有噪声表征之间的重叠大小成正比。根据其他解释，距离效应可能源于数字与大小类别之间的关联，并且当数字在与大小属性的关联强度上表现出相对较大差异时，表现会更好。在日常数字使用中，数字的值以及数字与大小类别之间的关联紧密相关；因此，这两种解释对距离效应有相同的预测。为了区分距离效应的两个潜在来源，在本研究中，参与者仅学习了1到3以及7到9之间的新的人工数字，从而排除了4到6之间的数字。结果发现，在距离效应中，被排除的数字范围（3到7之间的距离）被视为1，而不是4，这表明距离效应并不遵循主流解释所预测的数字值，而是遵循其他解释所预测的大小属性关联。
