| 研究概要 |
Arabic numerals depending on their contextual use can be divided into three main categories : cardinal (e.g., prices), ordinal (e.g., ranking lists), and nominal (e.g., postal codes). Cardinal and ordinal contexts imply quantitative information, whereas nominal numerals are used in contexts in which their quantity is irrelevant and mostly label things. During the course of last year, three studies were performed in order to understand the nature of Arabic numerals used in nominal context. In the first two studies a priming paradigm was employed, where prices and postal codes were presented immediately before participants compared single digit to a standard (e.g., "smaller or larger than 5") or as in the second study, compared two simultaneously presented digits (e.g., if 2 8 were displayed, participants decided which one is larger). Numerical distance effect (the closer two numbers are to each other, the longer it takes to decide which one is larger) was taken as a cognitive measure. T
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he important outcome from both studies was that numerical context modulated the processing times of Arabic numerals and evidence for difference between cardinal and nominal numerals was provided. The findings from the two studies were supported in a third study that required participants to name digits aloud. Like in the previous studies, cardinal context showed advantage over nominal one, suggesting that quantitative information contained in cardinal numerals facilitates numerical processing. In summary, the three studies showed that nominal numerals are differently processed from cardinal ones under quantity-relevant and irrelevant tasks. The outcome of the studies is significant since it provides first-hand experimental evidence for a contextual modulation of Arabic numerals. Different reviewers judged the current approach as highly original, and conclusively, it opens an important direction in numerical cognition by clarifying the contextual influence on numbers and by proposing methods to measure it. 隠す
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