Abstract
Animal and human data suggest the existence of a cross-species system of analog number representation (e.g., Cordes, Gelman, Gallistel, & Whalen, 2001; Meck & Church, 1983), which may mediate the computation of statistical regularities in the environment (Gallistel, Gelman, & Cordes, 2006). However, evidence of arithmetic manipulation of these nonverbal magnitude representations is sparse and lacking in depth. This study uses the analysis of variability as a tool for understanding properties of these combinatorial processes. Human subjects participated in tasks requiring responses dependent upon the addition, subtraction, or reproduction of nonverbal counts. Variance analyses revealed that the magnitude of both inputs and answer contributed to the variability in the arithmetic responses, with operand variability dominating. Other contributing factors to the observed variability and implications for logarithmic versus scalar models of magnitude representation are discussed in light of these results.
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The research reported in this article was supported by an NSF predoctoral fellowship and an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship to S.C. and by NSF Grants DFS-9209741 to R.G. and SRB-97209741 to R.G. and C.R.G.
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Cordes, S., Gallistel, C.R., Gelman, R. et al. Nonverbal arithmetic in humans: Light from noise. Perception & Psychophysics 69, 1185–1203 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193955
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193955