Abstract
Counting is characterized as a slow and error-prone action relying heavily on serial allocation of focused attention. However, quick and accurate counting is required for many real-world tasks (e.g., counting heads to ensure everyone is evacuated to a safe place in an emergency). Previous research suggests that task-irrelevant spatial dividers, which segment visual displays into small areas, facilitate focused attention and improve serial search. The present study investigated whether counting, which is also closely related to focused attention, can be facilitated by spatial dividers. Furthermore, the effect of spatial dividers on numerosity estimation, putatively dependent upon distributed attention, was also examined to provide insights into different types of number systems and different modes of visual attention. The results showed profound performance improvement by task-irrelevant spatial dividers in both counting and numerosity estimation tasks, indicating that spatial dividers may activate interaction between number and visual attention systems. Our findings provide the first evidence that task-irrelevant spatial dividers can be used to facilitate various types of numerical cognition.
Highlights
Enumeration is a basic mathematical ability that supports our actions in a wide range of daily tasks and is closely related to various cognitive functions such as attention1–5 and working memory6,7
Evidence supporting this single estimation system hypothesis comes from studies suggesting that the accuracy of numerosity estimation decreases with increasing numerical magnitude according to the Weber fraction19–23
Response times (RTs) advantages for the 2 × 2 and 4 × 4 divider conditions relative to the baseline 1 × 1 divider condition were tested by a two-way repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) with factors of divider (1 × 1, 2 × 2, 4 × 4) and numerosity [13, 20, 27, 34, 41]
Summary
Enumeration is a basic mathematical ability that supports our actions in a wide range of daily tasks and is closely related to various cognitive functions such as attention and working memory. Some researchers proposed that our abilities to subitize small numbers and estimate large numbers are rooted in the same mechanism called the approximate number system (ANS)15–18 Evidence supporting this single estimation system hypothesis comes from studies suggesting that the accuracy of numerosity estimation decreases with increasing numerical magnitude according to the Weber fraction. Still other researchers argued that the existence of a third system other than ANS and PNS can contribute to number knowledge This system is often called the parallel individuation system (PIS) or the object tracking system (OTS). We targeted visual attention systems, and aimed to identify situations in which counting and numerosity estimation can be systematically influenced by visual attention Investigating this issue is theoretically important as it can shed new light on how human number systems function and how they interacts with other cognitive systems. This knowledge may provide new hints to facilitate mathematical development, simplify procedures of tracking quantities of products, and aid relief actions at emergency scenes such as head counting after a fire, explosion, or earthquake
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