UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

The complexity of simple counting: ERP findings reveal early perceptual and late numerical processes in different arrangements

Akbari, Shadi; Soltanlou, Mojtaba; Sabourimoghaddam, Hassan; Nuerk, Hans-Christoph; Leuthold, Hartmut; (2022) The complexity of simple counting: ERP findings reveal early perceptual and late numerical processes in different arrangements. Scientific Reports , 12 , Article 6763. 10.1038/s41598-022-10206-y. Green open access

[thumbnail of The complexity of simple counting ERP findings reveal early perceptual and late numerical processes in different arrangement.pdf]
Preview
Text
The complexity of simple counting ERP findings reveal early perceptual and late numerical processes in different arrangement.pdf - Published Version

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

The counting process can only be fully understood when taking into account the visual characteristics of the sets counted. Comparing behavioral data as well as event-related brain potentials (ERPs) evoked by different task-irrelevant arrangements of dots during an exact enumeration task, we aimed to investigate the effect of illusory contour detection on the counting process while other grouping cues like proximity were controlled and dot sparsity did not provide a cue to the numerosity of sets. Adult participants (N = 37) enumerated dots (8–12) in irregular and two different types of regular arrangements which differed in the shape of their illusory dot lattices. Enumeration speed was affected by both arrangement and magnitude. The type of arrangement influenced an early ERP negativity peaking at about 270 ms after stimulus onset, whereas numerosity only affected later ERP components (> 300 ms). We also observed that without perceptual cues, magnitude was constructed at a later stage of cognitive processing. We suggest that chunking is a prerequisite for more fluent counting which influences automatic processing (< 300 ms) during enumeration. We conclude that the procedure of exact enumeration depends on the interaction of several perceptual and numerical processes that are influenced by magnitude and arrangement.

Type: Article
Title: The complexity of simple counting: ERP findings reveal early perceptual and late numerical processes in different arrangements
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-10206-y
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-10206-y
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Psychology and Human Development
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10197548
Downloads since deposit
2Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item