van Hoogmoed Anne H, Kroesbergen Evelyn H
Department of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Department of Special Needs Education and Youth Care, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2018 Sep 12;9:1650. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01650. eCollection 2018.
The ANS theory on the processing of non-symbolic numerosities and the ANS mapping account on the processing of symbolic numbers have been the most popular theories on numerosity and number processing, respectively, in the last 20 years. Recently, both the ANS theory and the ANS mapping account have been questioned. In the current study, we examined two main assumptions of both the ANS theory and the ANS mapping account. ERPs were measured in 21 participants during four same-different match-to-sample tasks, involving non-symbolic stimuli, symbolic stimuli, or a combination of symbolic and non-symbolic stimuli (i.e., mapping tasks). We strictly controlled the visual features in the non-symbolic stimuli. Based on the ANS theory, one would expect an early distance effect for numerosity in the non-symbolic task. However, the results show no distance effect for numerosity. When analyzing the stimuli based on visual properties, an early distance effect for area subtended by the convex hull was found. This finding is in line with recent claims that the processing of non-symbolic stimuli may be dependent on the processing of visual properties instead of on numerosity (only). With regards to the processing of symbolic numbers, the ANS mapping account states that symbolic numbers are first mapped onto their non-symbolic representations before further processing, since the non-symbolic representation is at the basis of processing the symbolic number. If the non-symbolic format is the basic format of processing, one would expect that the processing of non-symbolic numerosities would not differ between purely non-symbolic tasks and mapping tasks, resulting in similar ERP waveforms for both tasks. Our results show that the processing of non-symbolic numerosities does differ between the tasks, indicating that processing of non-symbolic number is dependent on task format. This provides evidence against the ANS mapping account. Alternative theories for both the processing of non-symbolic numerosities and symbolic numbers are discussed.
自主神经系统（ANS）关于非符号数量处理的理论以及ANS映射理论关于符号数字处理的理论，在过去20年里分别是关于数量和数字处理方面最流行的理论。最近，ANS理论和ANS映射理论都受到了质疑。在当前的研究中，我们检验了ANS理论和ANS映射理论的两个主要假设。在四项相同-不同匹配样本任务中，对21名参与者进行了事件相关电位（ERP）测量，这些任务涉及非符号刺激、符号刺激或符号与非符号刺激的组合（即映射任务）。我们严格控制了非符号刺激中的视觉特征。基于ANS理论，人们会预期在非符号任务中数量会出现早期距离效应。然而，结果显示数量不存在距离效应。当根据视觉属性分析刺激时，发现了凸包所张面积的早期距离效应。这一发现与最近的观点一致，即非符号刺激的处理可能依赖于视觉属性的处理而非仅仅依赖于数量。关于符号数字的处理，ANS映射理论指出，符号数字在进一步处理之前首先会被映射到它们的非符号表征上，因为非符号表征是处理符号数字的基础。如果非符号格式是处理的基本格式，那么人们会预期在纯非符号任务和映射任务之间，非符号数量的处理不会有差异，从而导致这两种任务的ERP波形相似。我们的结果表明，非符号数量的处理在不同任务之间确实存在差异，这表明非符号数字的处理依赖于任务格式。这为反对ANS映射理论提供了证据。文中还讨论了关于非符号数量和符号数字处理的替代理论。
