CIMeC - Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, Rovereto, Italy.
CIMeC - Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, Rovereto, Italy; DISI-Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Via Sommarive, 9, Trento, Italy.
Cognition. 2018 Dec;181:117-126. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.009. Epub 2018 Sep 1.
In this study, we investigate the mental representation of non-numerical quantifiers ("some", "many", "all", etc.) by comparing their use in abstract and in grounded perceptual contexts. Using an approach similar to that used in the number domain, we test whether (and to what extent) such representation is constrained by the way we perceive the world through our senses. In two experiments, subjects either judged the similarity of quantifier pairs (presented as written words) or chose among a predetermined list of quantifiers the one that best described a visual image depicting a variable number of target and non-target items. The results were rather consistent across experiments, and indicated that quantifiers are mentally organized on an ordered but non-linear compressed scale where the quantifiers that imply small quantities appear more precisely differentiated across each other compared to those implying large quantities. This fits nicely with the idea that we construct our representations of such symbols mainly by mapping them to the representations of quantities that we derive from perception.
在这项研究中，我们通过比较抽象和基于感知的语境来研究非数值量词（“一些”，“许多”，“全部”等）的心理表示。我们使用类似于数字领域中使用的方法，测试这种表示是否（以及在何种程度上）受到我们通过感官感知世界的方式的限制。在两项实验中，受试者要么判断量词对（以书面形式呈现）的相似性，要么从预定的量词列表中选择最能描述描绘可变数量的目标和非目标项目的视觉图像的量词。结果在两个实验中都相当一致，表明量词在一个有序但非线性的压缩尺度上进行心理组织，其中表示小数量的量词彼此之间的区分更为精确，而表示大数量的量词则不然。这与我们主要通过将这些符号映射到我们从感知中得出的数量的表示来构建它们的表示的观点非常吻合。
