Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 95, Issue 3, Pages 215-229Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2006.05.004
Keywords
numerical competence; cognitive development; bisection; Weber's law; comparative psychology; nonverbal cognition
Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD049912, R01 HD49912] Funding Source: Medline
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This study compared nonverbal numerical processing in 6-year-olds with that in nonhuman animals using a numerical bisection task. In the study, 16 children were trained on a delayed match-to-sample paradigm to match exemplars of two anchor numerosities. Children were then required to indicate whether a sample intermediate to the anchor values was closer to the small anchor value or the large anchor value. For two sets of anchor values with the same ratio, the probability of choosing the larger anchor value increased systematically with sample number, and the psychometric functions superimposed when plotted on a logarithmic scale. The psychometric functions produced by the children also superimposed with the psychometric functions produced by rhesus monkeys in an analogous previous experiment, These examples of superimposition demonstrate that nonverbal number representations, even in children who have acquired the verbal counting system, are modulated by Weber's law. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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