Department of Psychological Assessment, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
Department of Experimental Psychology - HapLab, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 May;85(4):1253-1266. doi: 10.3758/s13414-023-02658-9. Epub 2023 Jan 31.
The approximate number system (ANS) is thought to be an innate cognitive system that allows humans to perceive numbers (>4) in a fuzzy manner. One assumption of the ANS is that numerosity is represented amodally due to a mechanism, which filters out nonnumerical information from stimulus material. However, some studies show that nonnumerical information (e.g., spatial parameters) influence the numerosity percept as well. Here, we investigated whether there is a cross-modal transfer of spatial information between the haptic and visual modality in an approximate cross-modal number matching task. We presented different arrays of dowels (haptic stimuli) to 50 undergraduates and asked them to compare haptically perceived numerosity to two visually presented dot arrays. Participants chose which visually presented array matched the numerosity of the haptic stimulus. The distractor varied in number and displayed a random pattern, whereas the matching (target) dot array was either spatially identical or spatially randomized (to the haptic stimulus). We hypothesized that if a "numerosity" percept is based solely on number, neither spatially identical nor spatial congruence between the haptic and the visual target arrays would affect the accuracy in the task. However, results show significant processing advantages for targets with spatially identical patterns and, furthermore, that spatial congruency between haptic source and visual target facilitates performance. Our results show that spatial information was extracted from the haptic stimuli and influenced participants' responses, which challenges the assumption that numerosity is represented in a truly abstract manner by filtering out any other stimulus features.
近似数量系统（ANS）被认为是一种先天的认知系统，使人类能够以模糊的方式感知数字（>4）。ANS 的一个假设是，由于一种机制，数量以模态方式表示，该机制从刺激材料中过滤出非数字信息。然而，一些研究表明，非数字信息（例如空间参数）也会影响数量感知。在这里，我们研究了在近似跨模态数量匹配任务中，触觉和视觉模态之间是否存在空间信息的跨模态转移。我们向 50 名本科生展示了不同的销钉阵列（触觉刺激），并要求他们将触觉感知的数量与两个视觉呈现的点数组进行比较。参与者选择哪个视觉呈现的数组与触觉刺激的数量匹配。分心物的数量不同，显示随机模式，而匹配（目标）点数组要么在空间上相同，要么在空间上随机化（与触觉刺激）。我们假设，如果“数量”感知仅基于数字，则触觉和视觉目标数组之间在空间上完全相同或一致都不会影响任务的准确性。然而，结果表明，具有空间上相同模式的目标具有显著的处理优势，并且触觉源和视觉目标之间的空间一致性促进了性能。我们的结果表明，空间信息是从触觉刺激中提取出来的，并影响了参与者的反应，这挑战了数量以真正抽象的方式表示，从而过滤掉任何其他刺激特征的假设。
