Is There A Number Sense?

In numerous studies of investigating "number sense",researchers are focusing on how number information is abstracted and the time when it occurs.Number information such as abstract concepts and numerosity perception,is rather objective and reliable,can be quickly abstracted and processed.One interesting question in this field is the interference between numerosity and other sensory properties like size,area,density.It remains to answer whether we would use cues from other sensory attributes when perceiving numerosities.The current study has three experiments to let participants do two comparison tasks,one is area comparison,the other is numerosity comparison.I used both small and large ranges as numbers of dots.The aim of the study is to investigate whether goal-relevant information extraction would be interfered by the irrelevant feature.The results showed that:(1)A.For area comparison task,behavioral results did not differ.B.For N1 amplitude on frontal and occipital cortex,main effect of relative numerosity was significant,with an increasing tend as relative numerosity decreased.The main effect was also significant on electrodes of frontal cortex on N1 latency,with an increasing tend as relative numerosity increased.C.There was an interaction effect between relative numerosity levels and stimuli' number ranges.Different number range has different amplitude tendencies.In subitizing range,N2pc mean amplitude decreased as numerosity increased,showing a possibility of inhibition towards distractors.In estimation range,N2pc mean amplitude decreased when numerosity was less,implies enhancement towards target dots.Relative numerosity had an almost main effect on N2pc latency,with more numerosities longer latencies emerged.(2)A.Numerosity comparison behavioral performance was not interfered with different sizes of dots.B.N1 mean amplitude increased when relative areas of horizontal targets were larger in subitizing range,while in estimation task,N1 amplitudes were higher when there was difference between the areas of two parts of targets.C.Mean amplitudes of N2pc of different area levels had no significance from each other,while N2pc latency increased as dots' sizes became larger.Though it did not show differences on behavioral performance,the N2pc results still could illustrate that when making numerosity comparison,one may have earlier time course on stimulus which has a larger size.In small ranges of stimuli,N2pc amplitude's deceasing tendency as number of stimuli decreases may tell that attention is used for inhibiting distractors while a contrast tendency in large ranges can be explained by enhancing attention of targets.And area comparison task performance could be biased if numerosity varies.In area comparison task,individuation of targets existed,and relative numerosity in current task had modulated participants'perception towards areas,targets with larger sizes would be more likely guide attention.In estimation range,people tended to use relative numerosities as cues to make area judgments.