Attentional involvement in subitizing: Questioning the preattentive hypothesis

Poiese, Paola; Spalek, Thomas M.; Lollo, Vincent Di

doi:10.1080/13506280801969676

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Instead, it is the process that has been assumed to run automatically and in parallel that appears to be most affected. The same conclusion was reached by Poiese et al (2008 …”

Section: Dot Counting Errorssupporting

confidence: 74%

“…In Experiment 3, letter identification suffered more with increasing dot numbers in the preceding subitizing task. Vice versa, in Experiment 2, the more dots there were, the more enumeration suffered from the preceding letter identification task*a finding that has proven robust (Egeth et al, 2008 this issue;Poiese et al, 2008 this issue; see also Olivers & Watson, 2006, for a partial manipulation). Also, in Experiment 2, observers were fine at enumerating just a single dot, showing that the letter identification task did not simply result in complete inattentional blindness for the dot patterns (viz.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

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Subitizing requires attention

Olivers

Watson

2008

Visual Cognition

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While counting objects is typically a slow, serial process, enumerating about four or fewer objects has been considered to be a relatively effortless, parallel, and even preattentive process often referred to as subitizing. However, by combining a subitizing task with an attentional blink task, we show that subitizing is systematically affected by a closely preceding letter identification task. Vice versa, letter identification is also affected by a closely preceding subitizing task. Importantly, performance not only depended on the time between the two tasks, but also on the number of to-be-enumerated dots, even though this number fell within the subitizing range. The results imply that the processes underlying subitizing require attentional resources, suggesting that they are either serial in nature, or parallel, with capacity limited by the overall resources available.Research on visual attention has established that we are only aware of a few objects at a time. Several lines of evidence suggest that the limit lies at about four objects, units, or chunks of information. For example, Sperling (1960) found that the number of letters that can be reported from a briefly flashed display when no cues are provided is about four. Phillips (1974), Pashler (1988), and Luck and Vogel (1997 have calculated that observers can monitor a maximum of about four objects for changes across displays. Furthermore, studies on attentional capture in which varying numbers of new objects appear abruptly in a visual search display indicate that up to four such abrupt onsets are prioritized (Yantis & Johnson, 1990). Similarly,

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“…Instead, it is the process that has been assumed to run automatically and in parallel that appears to be most affected. The same conclusion was reached by Poiese et al (2008 …”

Section: Dot Counting Errorssupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Subitizing requires attention

Olivers

Watson

2008

Visual Cognition

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“…Given recent behavioral evidence against this claim (Egeth et al, 2008;Olivers & Watson, 2008;Poiese et al, 2008;Railo et al, 2008;Vetter et al, 2008), we investigated the attentional modulation of subitizing on the neural level. Our design was motivated by the load theory of attentional selection (Lavie, 1995(Lavie, , 2005, and thus, bore the advantage of (1) providing an adequate baseline condition under which subitizing related activity was suppressed and (2) the possibility to dissociate attentionally modulated numerosity processing from the effect of attentional effort.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By manipulating attentional load in a dual-task paradigm, we showed that the more attentional resources are withdrawn from an enumeration task, the more enumeration performance is impaired, both within as well as outside the subitizing range (Vetter, Butterworth, & Bahrami, 2008). Furthermore, given that subitizing performance improves by increasing stimulus presentation times beyond 50 msec, Poiese, Spalek, and DiLollo (2008) argued that subitizing must benefit from feedback processing from higher-level brain areas beyond V1. Taken together, this evidence severely challenges the claim of a preattentive subitizing mechanism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Candidate for the Attentional Bottleneck: Set-size Specific Modulation of the Right TPJ during Attentive Enumeration

Vetter

Butterworth²,

Bahrami³

2011

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract■ Several recent behavioral studies have shown that the enumeration of a small number of items (a process termed subitizing) depends on the availability of attentional resources and is not a preattentive process as previously thought. Here we studied the neural correlates of visual enumeration under different attentional loads in a dual-task paradigm using fMRI. Relatively intact subitizing under low attentional load compared to impaired subitizing under high attentional load was associated with an increase in BOLD signal in the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ). Crucially, attentionally modulated response in the rTPJ was specific to small set sizes (up to 3 items) and did not occur at larger set sizes (5-7 items). This result has two implications: (1) Subitizing involves part of the fronto-parietal network for stimulus-driven attention providing neural evidence against preattentive subitizing.(2) Activity in rTPJ is set-size modulated. Together with similar evidence from studies probing visual short-term memory, this result suggests that rTPJ modulation might reflect the brainʼs ability to attentively handle small set sizes. Thus, the rTPJ may play an important role for the emergence of a capacity limit in both enumeration and visual short-term memory. ■

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“…One focus of current research is to establish the role of attentional control in small number processing. Challenging Trick and Pylyshyn's (1994) description of subitizing as being the outcome of mid-level visuo-spatial indexing processes operating prior to the allocation of focal attention, a number of recent studies failed to confirm the assumed independence from attentional modulation as a property of the instantaneous and precise enumeration capacity for small set sizes (Burr et al, 2010;Poiese et al, 2008;Railo et al, 2008;Vetter et al, 2011; but see Piazza, Giacomini, LeBihan, & Dehaene, 2003). The results of these studies rather suggest that the distinction of stimulusdriven versus goal-oriented attentional functions as elaborated in Corbetta and Shulman's (2002) model may better describe the existing data .…”

Section: A C C E P T E D Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

An electrophysiological investigation of non-symbolic magnitude processing: Numerical distance effects in children with and without mathematical learning disabilities

Heine

Wißmann

Tamm

et al. 2013

Cortex

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IntroductionThe aim of the present study was to probe electrophysiological effects of nonsymbolic numerical processing in 20 children with mathematical learning disabilities (mean age = 99.2 months) compared to a group of 20 typically developing matched controls (mean age = 98.4 months). MethodsEEG data were obtained while children were tested with a standard non-symbolic numerical comparison paradigm that allowed us to investigate the effects of numerical distance manipulations for different set sizes, i.e. the classical subitizing, counting and estimation ranges. Effects of numerical distance manipulations on ERP amplitudes as well as activation patterns of underlying current sources were analyzed. ResultsIn typically developing children, the amplitudes of a late parietal positive-going ERP component showed systematic numerical distance effects that did not depend on set size. For the group of children with mathematical learning disabilities, ERP distance effects were found only for stimuli within the subitizing range. Current source density analysis of distancerelated group effects suggested that areas in right inferior parietal regions are involved in the generation of the parietal ERP amplitude differences. ConclusionOur results suggest that right inferior parietal regions are recruited differentially by controls compared to children with mathematical learning disabilities in response to non-symbolic numerical magnitude processing tasks, but only for stimuli with set sizes that exceed the subitizing range.

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Attentional involvement in subitizing: Questioning the preattentive hypothesis

Cited by 17 publications

References 17 publications

Subitizing requires attention

Subitizing requires attention

A Candidate for the Attentional Bottleneck: Set-size Specific Modulation of the Right TPJ during Attentive Enumeration

An electrophysiological investigation of non-symbolic magnitude processing: Numerical distance effects in children with and without mathematical learning disabilities

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