title: Hysteresis affects approximate number discrimination in young children.
abstract: Perceptual decisions are often affected not only by the evidence gathered during a trial but also by the history of preceding trials. This effect--termed perceptual hysteresis--provides evidence for how perceptual information is represented and how it is used. The present research focuses on how the difficulty of preceding trials affects subsequent ones--we find that how well 5-year-old children perform in a 2-alternative forced-choice numerical discrimination task depends on whether they have had a prior history of easier discriminations or a prior history of harder discriminations. Furthermore, this effect is modulated by the feedback children receive. In 3 experiments, we demonstrate that these effects are not related to practice or loss of interest due to negative feedback, or simply to trial difficulty or discriminability. Instead, children appear to have state-dependent confidence states such that prolonged experience making low-confidence decisions degrades performance, whereas prolonged experience making high-confidence decisions improves it. These results are discussed in the context of dynamical psychophysics, representations of confidence, and work on children's and adults' number perception abilities.
authors.affiliation: Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University.
authors.forename: Darko
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Odic
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University.
authors.forename: Howard
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hock
authors.affiliation: Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Halberda
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*