Abstract
Infants are known to possess two different cognitive systems to encode numerical information. The first system encodes approximate numerosities, has no known upper limit and is functional from birth on. The second system relies on infants’ ability to track up to 3 objects in parallel, and enables them to represent exact numerosity for such small sets. It is unclear, however, whether infants may be able to represent numerosities from all ranges in a common format. In various studies, infants failed to discriminate a small vs. a large numerosity (e.g., 2 vs. 4, 3 vs. 6), although more recent studies presented evidence that infants can succeed at these discriminations in some situations. Here, we used a transfer paradigm between the tactile and visual modalities in 5-month-olds, assuming that such cross-modal paradigm may promote access to abstract representations of numerosities, continuous across the small and large ranges. Infants were first familiarized with 2 to 4 objects in the tactile modality, and subsequently tested for their preference between 2 vs. 4, or 3 vs. 6 visual objects. Results were mixed, with only partial evidence that infants may have transferred numerical information across modalities. Implications on 5-month-old infants’ ability to represent small and large numerosities in a single or in separate formats are discussed.
Highlights
In the last few decades, a wealth of studies have investigated the representation of numerosity in infants
Post-hoc analyses revealed that infants familiarized with 4 objects looked longer at visual arrays of 2 objects (13 infants looked longer at the 2-object array, 1 infant looked longer at the 4-object array, and 2 infants looked long at both displays; p = .003), while infants familiarized with 2 objects looked long at both displays (8 infants looked longer at the 2-object array, 6 looked longer at the 4-object array, and 2 infants looked long at both displays; p = .61) (Fig. 2)
A previous study using the same tactile-visual transfer paradigm with small sets (2 vs. 3 items) found 5-month-old infants to look longer to visual displays that were novel in numerosity, Fig 2
Summary
In the last few decades, a wealth of studies have investigated the representation of numerosity in infants. While two visual items necessarily signal two objects, two tones can have been emitted by a single object or agent, and this ambiguity may have modulated the engagement of the object tracking system across studies These three lines of results suggest that in infants, just as in animals and adults, the ANS may be functional across the whole range of large and small numerosities. While the visual stimuli may be compatible with either formats of representation, it is possible that the slow-paced, sequential presentation used in the tactile familiarization phase can only be processed through object tracking representations In this case, infants familiarized to 2 items may still display a preference for the novel numerosity (4) at test, while infants familiarized to 4 items would not be able to encode any numerical information, and would not display a preference for the novel numerosity (2). Experiment 1: Cross-Modal Transfer of 2 vs. 4 Objects across the Visual and Tactile Modalities
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