Number sense in human infants
Number sense in human infants
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00395.x
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发表时间：
2005-01-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Goddard, S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Xu, F;Spelke, ES;Goddard, S
四个实验采用优先注视法来研究6个月大的婴儿在视觉空间显示中表示数字的能力。基于先前的研究结果，这些婴儿区分8和16个圆盘，而不是8和12个圆盘（Xu & Spelke, 2000），实验1和2研究了婴儿的数字辨别是否取决于两组更大数字的比例。婴儿成功地区分了16和32个光盘阵列，但不能区分16和24个光盘阵列，这证明他们的区分显示了人类成人、儿童和许多非人类动物的数量区分的固定大小比例特征。实验3和4解决了关于婴儿区分大数字（在控制总填充面积、阵列大小和密度、物品大小和相关属性（如亮度）的能力的争议：Brannon, 2002; Xu, 2003b; Xu & Spelke, 2000）与小数字（在控制总轮廓长度的条件下未观察到：Clearfield & Mix， 1999）。为了探究这些差异的来源，实验3测试了婴儿对轮廓长度的大数辨别，实验4测试了婴儿对总填充面积的小数辨别。婴儿能成功分辨出大数字的显示，但没有证据表明他们能分辨出小数字的显示。这些发现提供了证据，证明婴儿具有强大的表示大数的能力。相比之下，婴儿可能无法在连续数量控制的视觉空间数组中表示小数字，这与单独的系统用于表示大数字和小数字的论点一致。
Four experiments used a preferential looking method to investigate 6-month-old infants' capacity to represent numerosity in visual-spatial displays. Building on previous findings that such infants discriminate between arrays of eight versus 16 discs, but not eight versus 12 discs (Xu & Spelke, 2000), Experiments 1 and 2 investigated whether infants' numerosity discrimination depends on the ratio of the two set sizes with even larger numerosities. Infants successfully discriminated between arrays of 16 versus 32 discs, but not 16 versus 24 discs, providing evidence that their discrimination shows the set-size ratio signature of numerosity discrimination in human adults, children and many non-human animals. Experiments 3 and 4 addressed a controversy concerning infants' ability to discriminate large numerosities (observed under conditions that control for total filled area, array size and density, item size and correlated properties such as brightness: Brannon, 2002; Xu, 2003b; Xu & Spelke, 2000) versus small numerosities (not observed under conditions that control for total contour length: Clearfield & Mix, 1999). To investigate the sources of these differing findings, Experiment 3 tested infants' large-number discrimination with controls for contour length, and Experiment 4 tested small-number discrimination with controls for total filled area. Infants successfully discriminated the large-number displays but showed no evidence of discriminating the small-number displays. These findings provide evidence that infants have robust abilities to represent large numerosities. In contrast, infants may fail to represent small numerosities in visual-spatial arrays with continuous quantity controls, consistent with the thesis that separate systems serve to represent large versus small numerosities.