Towse J N, Saxton M
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1997 Sep;66(3):362-75. doi: 10.1006/jecp.1997.2389.
From observations of how children match numerals to number tokens, previous research has suggested that cognitive representations of numbers vary with the linguistic demarcation of numerals. It is argued here that this paradigm does not always support the idea that language affects number concepts and that children's performance is shaped by other constraints. In Experiment 1, increasing the salience of multiple unit tokens significantly altered the distribution of response strategies in 6 1/2- to 7 1/2-year-old children. In Experiments 2 and 3, the importance of instructions in biasing responses is demonstrated, as 5 1/2- to 7 1/2-year-old children's use of multiunit tokens increased when given an example of their potential use. It appears that the task reflects in part children's interpretations and misinterpretations of task demands. Implications for the role of language in acquiring base-10 number concepts are discussed.
根据对儿童如何将数字与数字符号进行匹配的观察，先前的研究表明，数字的认知表征会随着数字的语言划分而变化。本文认为，这种范式并不总是支持语言影响数字概念这一观点，而且儿童的表现是由其他限制因素塑造的。在实验1中，增加多个单位符号的显著性显著改变了6.5至7.5岁儿童的反应策略分布。在实验2和实验3中，证明了指令在偏向反应方面的重要性，因为当给出多单位符号潜在用途的示例时，5.5至7.5岁儿童对多单位符号的使用增加了。看来该任务部分反映了儿童对任务要求的理解和误解。文中讨论了语言在获取十进制数字概念中的作用。
