Subitizing requires attention. Olivers, C. N. L. & Watson, D. G. Visual Cognition, 16(4):439-462, 2008. doi abstract bibtex 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.
@Article{Olivers2008,
author = {Olivers, Christian N. L. and Watson, Derrick G.},
journal = {Visual Cognition},
title = {Subitizing requires attention},
year = {2008},
number = {4},
pages = {439-462},
volume = {16},
abstract = {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.},
doi = {10.1080/13506280701825861},
eprint = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13506280701825861},
groups = {Subitizing},
}
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