The Influence Of The Visual Selective Attention On The Numerical Distance Effectfrom The Study Of ERP

Numbers have a very important significance to our daily life and study, we often interact with the surrounding based on numbers. Numbers can help us to percept the quantity of things around us quickly and accurately, therefore, the number processing ability of human is a kind of very important mental ability. In our actual life, a wide range of visual selective attention is one kind of source which affects the number processing directly, but how various visual selective attentions influence the numerical distance effect on cognitive-neural mechanism is still unclear. This research use ERP(event-related potentials) to explore influence of visual selective attention on the numerical distance effect. In experiment one, the stimuli were Arabic numbers(1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9),the selective attention was caused by central cues, which contain valid cues and invalid cues. Subjects’ task was to decide whether the presented number was larger or smaller than 5 in numerical. In this experiment, all subjects take the same task. In experiment two, all were same as experiment one, except for the way which cause selective attention. In this experiment, selective attention was caused by peripheral cues, which also contain valid cues and invalid cues. The results showed that(1) whether on the condition of the endogenous or exogenous attention, cueing effect had significant influence on LPC amplitude, but on P3 amplitude, this effect was not be found; the numerical distance effect not only affected the P3 amplitude but also affected the LPC amplitude, and small numerical distance induced larger amplitude than large numerical distance.(2)Under the condition of endogenous attention, both to numerical distance effect, valid cue and invalid cue had similar influence on P3 amplitude, however, their influence was different on LPC amplitude. In LPC amplitude, the difference was invalid cue had greater influence than invalid cue to numerical distance effect. Whereas, under the condition of exogenous attention, the kinds of difference mentioned in endogenous attention did not appear.