Subitizing In The Time Dimension

As a hot spot of number sense,subitizing has been explained by various theories,including the single enumeration process hypothesis,the attention resource difference hypothesis,the limited working memory capacity hypothesis,the object individualized resource capacity hypothesis and so on.In recent years,the object file theory has been developed,and some strong evidence prove that the object individualization stage of the object file theory plays a key role in subitizing.Studies have shown that subitizing and visual working memory share components with limited capacity,and subitizing is closely related to the time window of object individuation.The study of subitizing based on the object file theory can put subitizing in a larger background,and help to explore the processing mechanism of subitizing in the time dimension.This experiment uses two diametrically opposed processing modes in the time dimension(integration vs.separation)in the phase of object individualization to study the effects of spatial subitizing(Experiments 1,2)and sequence subitizing(Experiments 3,4).Each part of experiment first accurately detects the individual target perception of each subject to find a single number of processed ’critical ISI’,and then conducts simultaneous and sequential subitizing experiments based on this parameter.This study found that both space and time number sense have the phenomenon of subitizing based on time integration and separation processing,and when the time series pattern is presented,the sense number capacity of the separation task is greater.When the quantitative stimulus is presented at the same time,the quantitative report of the integrated task and the separated task is equally stable;when the quantitative stimulus sequence is presented,the quantitative report of the separated task is more stable.When quantitative stimuli are presented at the same time,there is no significant difference in the deviation of the quantitative estimation between tasks;however,when the quantitative stimulus sequence is presented,the quantitative report under the integrated task is more underestimated.In addition,the screen blank interval(BDI)has a significant adjustment effect on the number effect of the sequence:as the BDI increases,the number underestimation becomes weaker and the stability of the number estimation increases;Our research proves that in the subitizing based on object individualization,time integration processing and time separation processing both play important roles,but the roles and contributions of the two types of processing are different.First of all,in the time series subitizing,the separation processing leads to a larger sensing capacity,which makes a greater contribution to the sensing capacity,and the sensing capacity based on the separation processing is less susceptible to other factors(such as screen blank interval).Secondly,when the quantitative stimuli are presented at the same time,the integrated processing contributes more to the stability of the inductive number processing,and when the quantitative stimulus sequence is presented,the separate processing contributes more.Third,for the accuracy of sensory number processing,when quantitative stimuli are presented at the same time,integrated processing and separation processing have the same contribution,and when quantitative stimuli sequence is presented,the contribution of separation processing is large.In general,integrated processing contributes more to the classical(simultaneous)subitizing effect,while separation processing contributes more to the sequence subitizing effect.