Adriano Andrea, Velde Michaël Vande
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Laboratoire Cognition Langage et Développement, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Sep 26. doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02755-w.
Enumerating a large set of objects (e.g., more than four items) can be accomplished more quickly and/or accurately when the objects are grouped into clusters based on Gestalt principles such as proximity and color similarity, a phenomenon known as "groupitizing." However, whether other visuospatial features can similarly influence this mechanism remains unclear. This study investigated the impact of a novel feature: shape-from-dots homogeneity. Participants performed a simple enumeration task involving dot patterns, ranging from four to 20 items, spatially arranged in small clusters. In Experiment 1, the dots within the clusters were placed to form either homogeneous patterns of regular quadrilaterals (e.g., squares) or heterogeneous patterns of irregular, randomly shaped quadrilaterals. To test whether the effect was simply due to symmetry/canonicity, in Experiment 2, the dots within the clusters were placed to form either homogeneous patterns of regular quadrilaterals (e.g., squares) or homogeneous patterns of irregular, randomly shaped quadrilaterals. The results revealed that enumeration reaction times were significantly faster when clusters formed homogeneous shapes compared to heterogeneous ones (Experiment 1), while no difference was found when both patterns contained homogeneous arrays independently of the shapes (Experiment 2), ruling out that the effect was merely driven by spatial symmetry or canonicity. These findings indicate a close interaction between general shape processing and numerosity perception in the Groupitizing mechanism. This suggests that shape-from-dots homogeneity can facilitate numerosity processing akin to other Gestalt principles, likely promoting a multiplication mechanism.
当根据格式塔原则（如接近性和颜色相似性）将对象分组为簇时，枚举大量对象（例如，超过四个项目）可以更快和/或更准确地完成，这种现象被称为“分组化”。然而，其他视觉空间特征是否能同样影响这一机制仍不清楚。本研究调查了一种新特征的影响：点形状同质性。参与者执行了一项简单的枚举任务，涉及点图案，从四个到二十个项目不等，在空间上排列成小簇。在实验1中，簇内的点被放置成规则四边形（如正方形）的同质图案或不规则、随机形状四边形的异质图案。为了测试该效应是否仅仅是由于对称性/规范性，在实验2中，簇内的点被放置成规则四边形（如正方形）的同质图案或不规则、随机形状四边形的同质图案。结果显示，与异质形状相比，当簇形成同质形状时，枚举反应时间显著更快（实验1），而当两种图案都包含同质阵列而与形状无关时，未发现差异（实验2），排除了该效应仅仅由空间对称性或规范性驱动的可能性。这些发现表明在分组化机制中，一般形状处理和数量感知之间存在密切的相互作用。这表明点形状同质性可以类似于其他格式塔原则促进数量处理，可能促进一种乘法机制。
