Effects of Presentation Type and Visual Control in Numerosity Discrimination: Implications for Number Processing?

Abstract

Performance in a non-symbolic comparison task in which participants are asked to indicate the larger numerosity of two dot arrays, is assumed to be supported by the Approximate Number System (ANS). This system allows participants to judge numerosity independently from other visual cues. Supporting this idea, previous studies indicated that numerosity can be processed when visual cues are controlled for. Consequently, distinct types of visual cue control are assumed to be interchangeable. However, a previous study showed that the type of visual cue control affected performance using a simultaneous presentation of the stimuli in numerosity comparison. In the current study, we explored whether the influence of the type of visual cue control on performance disappeared when sequentially presenting each stimulus in numerosity comparison. While the influence of the applied type of visual cue control was significantly more evident in the simultaneous condition, sequentially presenting the stimuli did not completely exclude the influence of distinct types of visual cue control. Altogether, these results indicate that the implicit assumption that it is possible to compare performances across studies with a differential visual cue control is unwarranted and that the influence of the type of visual cue control partly depends on the presentation format of the stimuli.

Comparing Numerical Comparison Tasks: A Meta-Analysis of the Variability of the Weber Fraction Relative to the Generation Algorithm

“…Secondly, and more critically for the purpose of the current meta-analysis, the procedure used to generate stimuli–and to control for non-numerical visual cues–does not have a negligible impact on the value of the Weber fraction (Inglis and Gilmore, 2014 ; Clayton et al, 2015 ; Smets et al, 2016 ). In numerical comparison tasks, participants are sensitive to non-numerical dimensions, and they might base their judgments on them (see Gebuis et al, 2016 ), so that any systematic confound between the number and one visual property substantially affects behavior.…”

“…Although we did not aim for the evaluation of specific influence of a given generation algorithm on participants' performance, we decided to emphasized the properties of the task–and their stimuli–that underlay every considered w . However, it should be noted that we did not consider any other methodological aspects that may affect performance (such as the duration of stimulus presentation or the range of the displayed numerical quantities, see Clayton et al, 2015 ; Smets et al, 2016 ), as they drastically fluctuated from studies to studies and were thus difficult to categorize in such meta-analysis. We describe how we categorize the dataset in the following section.…”

“…Among these issues, many studies showed that the assessment of ANS acuity, and the measure of w itself, are not independent of interference from low level visual cues that are intrinsically confounded with numerical quantities, and they revealed that w is nor consistent nor reliable across different tasks (Clayton et al, 2015 , 2018 ; Bugden and Ansari, 2016 ; Guillaume et al, 2016 ). Some authors subsequently argued that the procedure used to generate visual arrays substantially influence participant behavior, and therefore the evaluation of w (Inglis and Gilmore, 2014 ; Clayton et al, 2015 ; Smets et al, 2015 , 2016 ). In other words, the Weber fraction does not seem to be a stable psychophysiological parameter devoid of context; w can in fact be variable within one subject as a function of the task and the stimulus properties (but see Julio-Costa et al, 2015 ; DeWind and Brannon, 2016 ; for contradicting evidence).…”

Shared and distinct neural circuitry for nonsymbolic and symbolic double‐digit addition

“…Accordingly, the dot size and density were uninformative of numerosity within a given trial. Although visual perceptual cues have been shown to impact performance during nonsymbolic comparison tasks (Leibovich & Henik, 2014), these cues have minimal influence on performance during sequential presentation of dot stimuli (Smets, Moors, & Reynvoet, 2016). 1…”

The Effect Of Visual Properties On Numerical Judgments In Ans Tasks

“…It was demonstrated that the way of controlling visual properties of stimulus affects the accuracy of non-symbolic discrimination (Clayton, Gilmore & Inglis, 2015;Szucs et al, 2013). Under the conditions of several visual properties were controlled for (e.g., convex hull and surface area) the accuracy of comparison was lower than in in case with only one visual property was controlled for (Clayton, Gilmore & Inglis, 2015;Smets et al, 2016).…”