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Wang JJ, Kibbe MM. "Catastrophic" set size limits on infants' capacity to represent objects: A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13488. [PMID: 38421117 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2023] [Revised: 02/06/2024] [Accepted: 02/07/2024] [Indexed: 03/02/2024]
Abstract
Decades of research has revealed that humans can concurrently represent small quantities of three-dimensional objects as those objects move through space or into occlusion. For infants (but not older children or adults), this ability apparently comes with a significant limitation: when the number of occluded objects exceeds three, infants experience what has been characterized as a "catastrophic" set size limit, failing to represent even the approximate quantity of the hidden array. Infants' apparent catastrophic representational failures suggest a significant information processing limitation in the first years of life, and the evidence has been used as support for prominent theories of the development of object and numerical cognition. However, the evidence for catastrophic failure consists of individual small-n experiments that use null hypothesis significance testing to obtain null results (i.e., p > 0.05). Whether catastrophic representational failures are robust or reliable across studies, methods, and labs is not known. Here we report a systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis to examine the strength of the evidence in favor of catastrophic representational failures in infancy. Our analysis of 22 experiments across 12 reports, with a combined total of n = 367 infants aged 10-20 months, revealed strong support for the evidence for catastrophic set size limits. A complementary analysis found moderate support for infants' success when representing fewer than four objects. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of object and numerical cognitive development. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Previous work has suggested that infants are unable to concurrently represent four or more objects-a "catastrophic" set size limit. We reviewed this work and conducted a Bayesian meta-analysis to examine the robustness of this limit across individual small-n experiments. We found strong support for the evidence for catastrophic set size limits, and moderate support for infants' success when representing fewer than four objects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jinjing Jenny Wang
- Department of Psychology & Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
| | - Melissa M Kibbe
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
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Kibbe MM, Stahl AE. An object's categorizability impacts whether infants encode surface features into their object representations. INFANCY 2023; 28:958-972. [PMID: 37394971 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12555] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2022] [Revised: 04/11/2023] [Accepted: 06/16/2023] [Indexed: 07/04/2023]
Abstract
Infants encode the surface features of simple, unfamiliar objects (e.g., red triangle) and the categorical identities of familiar, categorizable objects (e.g., car) into their representations of these objects. We asked whether 16-18-month-olds ignore non-diagnostic surface features (e.g., color) in favor of encoding an object's categorical identity (e.g., car) when objects are from familiar categories. In Experiment 1 (n = 18), we hid a categorizable object inside an opaque box. In No Switch trials, infants retrieved the object that was hidden. In Switch trials, infants retrieved a different object: an object from a different category (Between-Category-Switch trials) or a different object from the same category (Within-Category-Switch trials). We measured infants' subsequent searching in the box. Infants' pattern of searching suggested that only infants who completed a Within-Category-Switch trial as their first Switch trial encoded objects' surface features, and an exploratory analysis suggested that infants who completed a Between-Category-Switch trial as their first Switch trial only encoded objects' categories. In Experiment 2 (n = 18), we confirmed that these results were due to objects' categorizability. These results suggest infants may tailor the way they encode categorizable objects depending on which object dimensions are perceived to be task relevant.
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Affiliation(s)
- Melissa M Kibbe
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Aimee E Stahl
- Department of Psychology, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, New Jersey, USA
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Kibbe MM, Stahl AE. Objects in a social world: Infants' object representational capacity limits are shaped by objects' social relevance. ADVANCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR 2023; 65:69-97. [PMID: 37481301 DOI: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2023.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/24/2023]
Abstract
Several decades of research have revealed consistent signature limits on infants' ability to represent objects. However, these signature representational limits were established with methods that often removed objects from their most common context. In infants' everyday lives, objects are very often social artifacts: they are the targets of agents' goal-directed actions, communications, and beliefs, and may have social content or relevance themselves. In this chapter, we explore the relationship between infants' object representational capacity limits and their processing of the social world. We review evidence that the social content and context of objects can shift infants' object representational limits. We discuss how taking the social world into account can yield more robust and ecologically valid estimates of infants' early representational capacities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Melissa M Kibbe
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States.
| | - Aimee E Stahl
- Department of Psychology, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ, United States
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Wang JJ, Feigenson L. What aspects of counting help infants attend to numerosity? INFANCY 2023; 28:218-239. [PMID: 36382568 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12512] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2022] [Revised: 09/03/2022] [Accepted: 10/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Recent work shows that 18-month old infants understand that counting is numerically relevant-infants who see objects counted are more likely to represent the approximate number of objects in the array than infants who see the objects labeled but not counted. Which aspects of counting signal infants to attend to numerosity in this way? Here we asked whether infants rely on familiarity with the count words in their native language, or on procedures instantiated by the counting routine, independent of specific tokens. In three experiments (N = 48), we found that 18-month old infants from English-speaking households successfully distinguished four hidden objects from two when the objects were counted correctly, regardless of their familiarity with the count words (i.e., when objects were counted in familiar English and in unfamiliar German). However, when the objects were counted using familiar English count words in ways that violated basic counting principles, infants no longer represented the arrays, failing to distinguish four hidden objects from two. Together with previous findings, these results suggest that children may link the procedure of counting with numerosity years before they learn the meanings of the count words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jinjing Jenny Wang
- Department of Psychology, Rutgers University - New Brunswick, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA.,Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University - New Brunswick, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA
| | - Lisa Feigenson
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
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Stahl AE, Pareja D, Feigenson L. Early understanding of ownership helps infants efficiently organize objects in memory. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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Smith-Flores AS, Feigenson L. “Yay! Yuck!” toddlers use others’ emotional responses to reason about hidden objects. J Exp Child Psychol 2022; 221:105464. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2021] [Revised: 04/08/2022] [Accepted: 04/28/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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Kampis D, Kovács ÁM. Seeing the World From Others' Perspective: 14-Month-Olds Show Altercentric Modulation Effects by Others' Beliefs. Open Mind (Camb) 2022; 5:189-207. [PMID: 36438424 PMCID: PMC9692050 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00050] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2020] [Accepted: 11/17/2021] [Indexed: 07/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Humans have a propensity to readily adopt others' perspective, which often influences their behavior even when it seemingly should not. This altercentric influence has been widely studied in adults, yet we lack an understanding of its ontogenetic origins. The current studies investigated whether 14-month-olds' search in a box for potential objects is modulated by another person's belief about the box's content. We varied the person's potential belief such that in her presence/absence an object was removed, added, or exchanged for another, leading to her true/false belief about the object's presence (Experiment 1, n = 96); or transformed into another object, leading to her true/false belief about the object's identity (i.e., the objects represented under a specific aspect, Experiment 2, n = 32). Infants searched longer if the other person believed that an object remained in the box, showing an altercentric influence early in development. These results suggest that infants spontaneously represent others' beliefs involving multiple objects and raise the possibility that infants can appreciate that others encode the world under a unique aspect.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dora Kampis
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary/Vienna, Austria
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Lockman JJ, Tamis-LeMonda CS. Young Children's Interactions with Objects: Play as Practice and Practice as Play. ANNUAL REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2021; 3:165-186. [PMID: 37859666 PMCID: PMC10586717 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-devpsych-050720-102538] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2023]
Abstract
Objects permeate human culture and saturate the imagination. This duality offers both opportunity and challenge. Here we ask how young human children learn to exploit the immense potential afforded by objects that can exist simultaneously in both physical and imaginary realms. To this end, we advance a new framework that integrates the presently siloed literatures on manual skill and play development. We argue that developments in children's real and imagined use of objects are embodied, reciprocal and intertwined. Advances in one plane of action influence and scaffold advances in the other. Consistent with this unified framework, we show how real and imagined interactions with objects are characterized by developmental parallels in how children a) gradually move beyond objects' designed functions, b) extend beyond the self, and c) transcend the present to encompass future points in time and space. As well, we highlight how children's real and imagined interactions with objects are intertwined and reciprocally influence each other throughout development: Play engenders practice and skill in using objects, but just the same, practice using objects engenders advances in play. We close by highlighting the theoretical, empirical and translational implications of this embodied and integrated account of manual skill and play development.
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Benavides-Varela S, Reoyo-Serrano N. Small-range numerical representations of linguistic sounds in 9- to 10-month-old infants. Cognition 2021; 213:104637. [PMID: 33685628 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104637] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2020] [Revised: 02/11/2021] [Accepted: 02/13/2021] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
Coordinated studies provide evidence that very young infants, like human adults and nonhuman animals, readily discriminate small and large number of visual displays on the basis of numerical information. This capacity has been considerably less studied in the auditory modality. Surprisingly, the available studies yielded mixed evidence concerning whether numerical representations of auditory items in the small number range (1 to 3) are present early in human development. Specifically, while newborns discriminate 2- from 3-syllable sequences, older infants at 6 and 9 months of age fail to differentiate 2 from 3 tones. This study tested the hypothesis that infants can represent small sets more precisely when listening to ecologically relevant linguistic sounds. The aim was to probe 9- to 10-month-olds' (N = 74) ability to represent sound sets in a working memory test. In experiments 1 and 2, infants successfully discriminated 2- and 3-syllable sequences on the basis of their numerosity, when continuous variables, such as individual item duration, inter-stimulus duration, pitch, intensity, and total duration, were controlled for. In experiment 3, however, infants failed to discriminate 3- from 4-syllable sequences under similar conditions. Finally, in experiment 4, infants were tested on their ability to distinguish 2 and 3 tone sequences. The results showed no evidence that infants discriminated these non-linguistic stimuli. These findings indicate that, by means of linguistic sounds, infants can access a numerical system that yields precise auditory representations in the small number range.
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Affiliation(s)
- Silvia Benavides-Varela
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
| | - Natalia Reoyo-Serrano
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
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Applin JB, Kibbe MM. Six-Month-Old Infants Predict Agents' Goal-Directed Actions on Occluded Objects. INFANCY 2019; 24:392-410. [PMID: 32677190 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12282] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2018] [Revised: 12/11/2018] [Accepted: 12/14/2018] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Infants can infer agents' goals after observing agents' goal-directed actions on objects and can subsequently make predictions about how agents will act on objects in the future. We investigated the representations supporting these predictions. We familiarized 6-month-old infants to an agent who preferentially reached for one of two featurally distinct objects following a cue. At test, the objects were sequentially occluded from the infant in the agent's presence. We asked whether infants could generate action predictions without visual access to the relevant objects by measuring whether infants shifted their gaze to the location of the agent's hidden goal object following the cue. We also examined what infants represented about the hidden objects by removing one of the occluders to reveal either the original hidden object or the unexpected other object and measuring infants' looking time. We found that, even without visual access to the objects, infants made predictive gazes to the location of the agent's occluded goal object, but failed to represent the features of either hidden object. These results suggest that infants make goal-based action predictions when the relevant objects in the scene are occluded, but doing so may come at the expense of maintaining representations of the objects.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Melissa M Kibbe
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University
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