Supplementary information files for Concepts of order: why is ordinality processed slower and less accurately for non-consecutive sequences?

© the Authors, CC-BY 4.0Supplementary files for article Concepts of order: why is ordinality processed slower and less accurately for non-consecutive sequences?Both adults and children are slower at judging the ordinality of non-consecutive sequences (e.g., 1-3-5) than consecutive sequences (e.g., 1-2-3). It has been suggested that the processing of non-consecutive sequences is slower because it conflicts with the intuition that only count-list sequences are correctly ordered. An alternative explanation, however, may be that people simply find it difficult to switch between consecutive and non-consecutive concepts of order during order judgement tasks. Therefore, in adult participants, we tested whether presenting consecutive and non-consecutive sequences separately would eliminate this switching demand and thus improve performance. In contrast with this prediction, however, we observed similar patterns of response times independent of whether sequences were presented separately or together (Experiment 1). Furthermore, this pattern of results remained even when we doubled the number of trials and made participants explicitly aware when consecutive and non-consecutive sequences were presented separately (Experiment 2). Overall, these results suggest slower response times for non-consecutive sequences do not result from a cognitive demand of switching between consecutive and non-consecutive concepts of order, at least not in adults.© 作者团队，CC-BY 4.0许可。本文为论文《秩序概念：为何非连续序列的序数加工速度更慢、准确性更低？》的补充材料。无论是成人还是儿童，对非连续序列（如1-3-5）进行序数判断时，反应速度均慢于连续序列（如1-2-3）。此前有研究提出，非连续序列的加工速度较慢，是因为其与“仅计数列表序列才符合正确顺序”的直觉认知相冲突。但另有解释认为，在序数判断任务中，人们只不过难以在连续与非连续的秩序概念间进行切换。为此，本研究针对成人被试，检验了将连续与非连续序列分开呈现是否能够消除此类切换需求，进而提升任务表现。但与该预测相悖的是，无论序列是分开呈现还是混合呈现，我们均观察到了相似的反应时模式（实验1）。进一步而言，即便我们将试次数量翻倍，并让被试明确知晓连续与非连续序列的分离呈现时机，该结果模式依然成立（实验2）。综合来看，本研究结果表明，非连续序列对应的反应时更长这一现象，并非源于在连续与非连续秩序概念间切换的认知需求——至少在成人被试群体中是如此。