Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 26;15(3):e0230559. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230559. eCollection 2020.
The representation of number symbols is assumed to be unique, and not shared with other ordinal sequences. However, little research has examined if this is the case, or whether properties of symbols (such as spatial complexity) affect ordinal learning. Two studies were conducted to investigate if the property of spatial complexity affects learning ordinal sequences. In Study 1, 46 adults made a series of judgements about two novel symbol sets (Gibson and Sunúz). The goal was to find a novel symbol set that could be ordered by spatial complexity. In Study 2, 84 adults learned to order nine novel symbols (Sunúz) with a paired comparison task, judging which symbol was 'larger' (whereby the larger symbol became physically larger as feedback), and were then asked to rank the symbols. Participants were assigned to either a condition where there was a relationship between spatial complexity and symbol order, or a condition where there was a random relationship. Of interest was whether learning an ordered list of symbols would be facilitated by the spatial complexity of the novel symbols. Findings suggest spatial complexity affected learning ability, and that pairing spatial complexity with relational information can facilitate learning ordinal sequences. This suggests that the implicit cognitive representation of number may be a more general feature of ordinal lists, and not exclusive to number per se.
数字符号的表示形式被认为是独特的，不会与其他序数序列共享。然而，很少有研究探讨这种情况是否存在，或者符号的属性（如空间复杂性）是否会影响序数学习。本研究进行了两项研究，以调查空间复杂性的属性是否会影响序数序列的学习。在研究 1 中，46 名成年人对两个新符号集（Gibson 和 Sunúz）进行了一系列判断。目的是找到一种可以按空间复杂性排序的新符号集。在研究 2 中，84 名成年人使用配对比较任务学习了九个新符号（Sunúz）的排序，判断哪个符号更大（较大的符号作为反馈会变大），然后要求他们对符号进行排序。参与者被分配到空间复杂性与符号顺序之间存在关系的条件下，或者随机关系的条件下。感兴趣的是，新符号的空间复杂性是否会促进有序符号列表的学习。研究结果表明，空间复杂性会影响学习能力，并且将空间复杂性与关系信息相结合可以促进序数序列的学习。这表明，数字的隐式认知表示可能是序数列表的更一般特征，而不仅仅是数字本身。
