Marinova Mila, Reynvoet Bert
Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Science and Assessment, University of Luxembourg, Esch-Belval, Luxembourg.
Brain and Cognition, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Psychol Res. 2024 Dec 28;89(1):39. doi: 10.1007/s00426-024-02044-6.
Researchers in numerical cognition have extensively studied the number sense-the innate human ability to extract numerical information from the environment quickly and effortlessly. Much of this research, however, uses abstract stimuli (e.g., dot configurations) that are also strictly controlled for their low-level visual confounds, such as size. Nonetheless, individuals rarely extract numerical information from abstract stimuli in everyday life. Yet, numerical judgments of familiar objects remain poorly understood and understudied. In the current study, we examined the cognitive mechanisms underlying the numerical decisions of familiar objects. In two experiments, we asked adult participants (Experiment 1) and two groups of children (aged 7-9 years and 11-12 years, Experiment 2) to perform an animal numerosity task (i.e., "Which animal is more numerous?"), while the conceptual congruency (i.e., the congruency between an object's real-life size and its numerosity) and physical congruency (the congruency between the number of items and the total space they occupy on the screen) were manipulated. Results showed that the conceptual congruency effect (i.e., better performance when the animal with a larger size in real life is more numerous) and a physical congruency effect (i.e., better performance when the physically larger animal is more numerous) were present in adults and children. However, the effects differed across the age groups and were also a subject of developmental change. To our knowledge, this study is the first one to demonstrate that conceptual knowledge can interfere with numerosity judgements in a top-down manner. This interference effect is distinct from the bottom-up interference effect, which comes from the physical properties of the set. Our results imply that the number sense is not a standalone core system for numbers but is embedded in a more extensive network where both low-level and higher-order influences are possible. We encourage numerical cognition researchers to consider employing not only abstract but also familiar objects when examining numerosity judgements across the lifespan.
数字认知领域的研究人员广泛研究了数字感——人类从环境中快速且轻松地提取数字信息的天生能力。然而，这项研究大多使用抽象刺激（如点阵配置），这些刺激也因其低级视觉混淆因素（如大小）而受到严格控制。尽管如此，个体在日常生活中很少从抽象刺激中提取数字信息。然而，对于熟悉物体的数字判断仍知之甚少且研究不足。在当前的研究中，我们考察了熟悉物体数字决策背后的认知机制。在两项实验中，我们要求成年参与者（实验1）和两组儿童（7至9岁和11至12岁，实验2）执行一项动物数量任务（即“哪种动物数量更多？”），同时操纵概念一致性（即物体实际大小与其数量之间的一致性）和物理一致性（项目数量与其在屏幕上占据的总空间之间的一致性）。结果表明，概念一致性效应（即现实生活中体型较大的动物数量更多时表现更好）和物理一致性效应（即物理上较大的动物数量更多时表现更好）在成年人和儿童中均存在。然而，这些效应在不同年龄组中存在差异，并且也是发展变化的一个主题。据我们所知，本研究是第一个证明概念知识可以自上而下地干扰数量判断的研究。这种干扰效应与来自集合物理属性的自下而上的干扰效应不同。我们的结果意味着数字感不是一个独立的数字核心系统，而是嵌入在一个更广泛的网络中，在这个网络中，低级和高级影响都是可能的。我们鼓励数字认知研究人员在研究整个生命周期的数量判断时，不仅要考虑使用抽象物体，还要考虑使用熟悉的物体。
