Abstract
Numerosity comparison for regular patterns shows different features compared with that for random ones in previous studies, suggesting an underlying mechanism distinct from numerosity. In this study, we went further to compare the event-related potentials (ERP) components in numerosity processing of random and regular patterns, which are identical in all aspects of texture features except for the distribution. ERP components were recorded and analyzed while participants compared which of the two successively presented sets was more numerous. P2p amplitude was revealed to be significantly weaker for regular patterns compared with that for random patterns over right occipital-parietal cites, whereas no difference was found for P1 or N1 components. The difference in P2p amplitude, which is consistent with the behavior dissociation revealed in our previous studies, suggests that regular distribution can trigger distinct processing in numeral comparison tasks. Processing of continuous magnitudes or configuration cannot explain the decrease in P2p amplitude for regular distributed patterns. Therefore, this study further supports that P2p is mediated by numerosity processing.
Highlights
The ability to process numerosity enables us to rapidly enumerate, generate, and compare numeral information (Dehaene, 2002; Cantlon and Brannon, 2005; Cicchini et al, 2016, 2019)
We found that P2p amplitude is significantly weaker for regular patterns compared with that for random patterns over the right occipital-parietal region, which is highly correlated with non-symbolic approximate numeral processing (Piazza et al, 2007; Holloway et al, 2010; Fornaciai and Park, 2017)
Behavioral and event-related potentials (ERP) features were analyzed for numerical comparison with random and regular patterns
Summary
The ability to process numerosity enables us to rapidly enumerate, generate, and compare numeral information (Dehaene, 2002; Cantlon and Brannon, 2005; Cicchini et al, 2016, 2019). ERP components for number comparison in random and regular patterns were recorded and compared. To this end, we found that P2p amplitude is significantly weaker for regular patterns compared with that for random patterns over the right occipital-parietal region, which is highly correlated with non-symbolic approximate numeral processing (Piazza et al, 2007; Holloway et al, 2010; Fornaciai and Park, 2017). The difference in P2p amplitude is consistent with the behavior dissociation revealed in previous studies (Liu et al, 2017, 2018), which suggests that regular distribution can trigger a processing mechanism other than numerosity in comparison tasks. This study provides further evidence supporting that P2p is mediated by numerosity processing
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