Humans and non-humans can extract an estimate of the number of items in a collection very rapidly, raising the question of whether attention is necessary for this process. Visual attention operates in various modes, showing selectivity both to spatial location and to objects. Here, we tested whether each form of attention can enhance number estimation, by measuring whether presenting a visual cue to increase attentional engagement will lead to a more accurate and precise representation of number, both when attention is directed to location and when it is directed to objects. Results revealed that enumeration of a collection of dots in the location previously cued led to faster, more precise, and more accurate judgments than enumeration in un-cued locations, and a similar benefit was seen when the cue and collection appeared on the same object. This work shows that like many other perceptual tasks, numerical estimation may be enhanced by the spread of active attention inside a pre-cued object.

人类和非人类可以非常快速地估计集合中的项目数量，这就提出了这个过程是否需要注意力的问题。视觉注意以多种模式运作，表现出对空间位置和物体的选择性。在这里，我们测试了每种形式的注意力是否可以增强数字估计，通过测量呈现视觉提示来增加注意力参与是否会导致更准确和精确的数字表示，无论是当注意力集中在位置还是注意力集中时对象。结果显示，与未提示位置中的枚举相比，对先前提示位置中的点集合进行枚举可以做出更快、更精确和更准确的判断，并且当提示和集合出现在同一对象上时，也可以看到类似的好处。这项工作表明，与许多其他感知任务一样，数值估计可以通过在预先提示的对象内传播主动注意力来增强。