ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

›› 2011, Vol. 19 ›› Issue (7): 967-975.

• 研究前沿 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Cognitive Mechanism of Subitizing: From Attention to Working Memory

WANG Yi-Feng;WANG Rong-Yan;LI Hong   

  1. Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
  • Received:2010-11-12 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2011-07-15 Published:2011-07-15
  • Contact: LI Hong

Abstract: Subitizing, the fast and accurate perception of up to about 3 or 4 objects, reflects a basic capacity of numerical representation of organism. It used to be considered as a parallel preattentive process. Recently, some studies found that subitizing, like counting, required attention resources. However, the attention resource hypothesis could not powerfully explain the discontinuity between subitizing and counting. To disentangle the confusion, this review summarized recent studies on visuo-spatial working memory, and put forward a new perspective of the cognitive mechanism of subitizing based on the similarity between subitizing and visuo-spatial working memory. We argued that visuo-spatial working memory capacity limited the number of objects we could accurately perceive at a time, while attention determined what information would enter into visuo-spatial working memory.

Key words: subitizing, cognitive mechanism, attention, visuo-spatial working memory