School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2021 Apr;28(2):476-486. doi: 10.3758/s13423-020-01836-2. Epub 2020 Nov 17.
Humans can efficiently individuate a small number of objects. This subitizing ability is thought to be a consequence of limited attentional resources. However, how and what is selected during the individuation process remain outstanding questions. We investigated these in four experiments by examining if parts of objects are enumerated as efficiently as distinct objects in the presence and absence of distractor objects. We found that distractor presence reduced subitizing efficiency. Crucially, parts connected to multiple objects were enumerated less efficiently than independent objects or parts connected to a single object. These results argue against direct individuation of parts and show that objecthood plays a fundamental role in individuation. Objects are selected first and their components are selected in subsequent steps. This reveals that individuation operates sequentially over multiple levels.
人类可以高效地区分少量物体。这种数量感能力被认为是注意力资源有限的结果。然而，在区分过程中如何以及选择什么仍然是悬而未决的问题。我们通过在存在和不存在干扰物体的情况下检查物体的部分是否像不同的物体一样高效地计数，在四个实验中研究了这些问题。我们发现干扰物的存在会降低数量感的效率。至关重要的是，与多个物体相连的部分比独立的物体或与单个物体相连的部分计数效率更低。这些结果反对直接对部分进行区分，并表明物体在区分中起着基本作用。物体首先被选择，然后在后续步骤中选择它们的组成部分。这表明区分是在多个层次上依次进行的。
