Barnard College of Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
Université Paris Descartes, 75006 Paris, France; Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS UMR 8242, Centre Biomédical des Saints-Pères, Université Paris Descartes, 75270 Paris, France.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Mar;179:260-275. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.11.017. Epub 2018 Dec 15.
When adding or subtracting quantities, adults tend to overestimate addition outcomes and underestimate subtraction outcomes. They also shift visuospatial attention to the right when adding and to the left when subtracting. These operational momentum phenomena are thought to reflect an underlying representation in which small magnitudes are associated with the left side of space and large magnitudes with the right side of space. Currently, there is limited research on operational momentum in early childhood or for operations other than addition and subtraction. The current study tested whether English-speaking 3- and 4-year-old children and college-aged adults exhibit operational momentum when ordering quantities. Participants were presented with two experimental blocks. In one block of trials, they were tasked with choosing the same quantity they had previously seen three times; in the other block, they were asked to generate the next quantity in a doubling sequence composed of three ascending quantities. A bias to shift attention to the right after an ascending operation was found in both age groups, and a bias to overestimate the next sequential quantity during an ascending ordering operation was found in adults under conditions of uncertainty. These data suggest that, for children, the spatial biases during operating are more pronounced than the mis-estimation biases. These findings highlight the spatial underpinnings of operational momentum and suggest that both very young children and adults conceptualize quantity along a horizontal continuum during ordering operations, even before formal schooling.
在进行加或减运算时，成年人往往会高估加法结果，低估减法结果。他们在进行加法运算时，会将视空间注意向右转移，在进行减法运算时，会将视空间注意向左转移。这些操作动量现象被认为反映了一种潜在的表示，其中小数量与空间的左侧相关，而大数量与空间的右侧相关。目前，关于幼儿时期或除加、减运算之外的操作的操作动量的研究有限。本研究测试了讲英语的 3 岁和 4 岁儿童以及大学生是否在对数量进行排序时表现出操作动量。参与者接受了两个实验块的测试。在一个试验块中，他们的任务是选择他们之前看到过三次的相同数量；在另一个块中，他们被要求在由三个递增数量组成的倍增序列中生成下一个数量。在两个年龄组中，在进行递增操作后，都发现了向右侧转移注意力的偏差，而在不确定条件下，成年人在进行递增排序操作时，会高估下一个连续数量。这些数据表明，对于儿童来说，操作时的空间偏差比错误估计偏差更为明显。这些发现强调了操作动量的空间基础，并表明，即使在正式入学之前，儿童和成年人在进行排序操作时，都会沿着水平连续体概念化数量。
