He Xinyao, Zhou Xinlin, Zhao Jin, Zhang Yiyun
School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Liaoning, China.
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Siegler Center for Innovative Learning, Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 22;12:722261. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.722261. eCollection 2021.
Previous studies have found a correlation between numerosity processing and arithmetical performance. Visual perception has already been indicated as the shared cognitive mechanism between these two; however, these studies mostly focused on children. It is not clear whether the association between numerosity processing and arithmetical performance still existed following the development of individual arithmetical performance. Consequently, the underlying role of visual perception in numerosity processing and arithmetical performance has not been sufficiently studied in adults. For this study, researchers selected a total of 205 adult participants with an average age of 22years. The adults were administered arithmetic tests, numerosity comparison, and visual figure matching. Mental rotation, choice reaction time, and nonverbal intelligence were used as cognitive covariates. Results showed that numerosity comparison of adults correlated with their arithmetical performance, even after controlling for age and gender differences as well as general cognitive processing. However, after controlled for visual figure matching, the well-established association between numerosity comparison and arithmetic performance disappeared. These results supported the visual perception hypothesis, that visual perception measured by visual figure matching can account for the correlation between numerosity comparison and arithmetic performance. This indicated that even for adult populations, visual perceptual ability was the underlying component of numerosity processing and arithmetic performance.
以往的研究发现了数字处理与算术表现之间的关联。视觉感知已被指出是这两者之间共有的认知机制；然而，这些研究大多聚焦于儿童。目前尚不清楚随着个体算术表现的发展，数字处理与算术表现之间的关联是否仍然存在。因此，视觉感知在数字处理和算术表现中的潜在作用在成年人中尚未得到充分研究。在这项研究中，研究人员共选取了205名平均年龄为22岁的成年参与者。对这些成年人进行了算术测试、数字比较和视觉图形匹配。心理旋转、选择反应时间和非言语智力被用作认知协变量。结果显示，即使在控制了年龄、性别差异以及一般认知加工之后，成年人的数字比较仍与他们的算术表现相关。然而，在控制了视觉图形匹配之后，数字比较与算术表现之间已确立的关联消失了。这些结果支持了视觉感知假说，即通过视觉图形匹配测量的视觉感知可以解释数字比较与算术表现之间的相关性。这表明，即使对于成年人群体，视觉感知能力也是数字处理和算术表现的潜在组成部分。
