Commentary on: “Number-space mapping in the newborn chick resembles humans' mental number line”

Frontiers in Psychology

Caroline B. Drucker¹ 

关键词: numerical cognition;    spatial cognition;    mental number line;    birds;    culture;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00352

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

When you think about the numbers one through twenty, what do you see? Most people visualize numbers laid out in space from left to right. In other words, we have a “mental number line” (Restle, 1970; Seron et al., 1992). People are actually faster at making judgments about small numbers when they are presented on the left and large numbers on the right, providing strong evidence that number is mentally mapped onto space in adults (Dehaene et al., 1993). This oft-replicated psychophysical phenomenon (Fias and Fischer, 2005) is reduced or even reversed in cultures that read from right to left, suggesting that the mental number line is a byproduct of culturally specific experiences (Zebian, 2005; Shaki and Fischer, 2008; Shaki et al., 2009). An alternative possibility is that even though the mental number line can be influenced by cultural practices it has a more fundamental place in the mind.

【 授权许可】

CC BY